


Facts Concerning the Present Nemeton and Attachments

by Guede



Series: Of Werewolves and Tentacles [11]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Teen Wolf (TV), Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Belly Rubs, Body Language, Chastity Device, Cthulhu Mythos, F/M, Graduate Student Stiles Stilinski, Humor, Laura Hale Lives, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Voyeurism, Werewolf Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:27:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 70,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Wherein Stiles is in a stable, long-term relationship with two werewolves and they all at least try to communicate with each other, while he tries to work on his Ph.D in cosmic horror alien studies, and it seems…normal.  Which, honestly, is a little abnormal.Conveniently, there’s another Cthulhic Studies-with-werewolves scholar in town for gutchecking purposes.
Relationships: Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Athelstan/Lagertha/Ragnar Lothbrok, Chris Argent/Melissa McCall/Sheriff Stilinski, Derek Hale/Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Of Werewolves and Tentacles [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/594739
Comments: 104
Kudos: 91





	1. Chapter 1

Stiles has eight hundred and seventy-six unread emails in his Miskatonic inbox right now. Seven hundred or so of them are pernicious spam he allows through the filters solely as feeding material for the Tindalosian e-worm he picked up on one of his undergraduate semesters abroad (look, it’s perfectly safe, he has it triple-bubbled off on its own server and only the visiting students the Leng librarians _like_ get one), while another eighty are official University communications he doesn’t read because ahem, son of its head of Security. On any given day, half the remaining emails are from people he really doesn’t like who aren’t competent enough to hex him for ghosting on them.

That currently leaves forty emails, one of which is flagged at the very top for his attention because it’s from his dad. Which immediately sets off alarm bells, given that these days his dad appears to prefer to communicate via text, so Stiles calls him.

“Shit,” Derek mumbles, not exactly jerking out of what appeared to be a death-grip slumber on the far side of the bed. He humps off the piece of sheet that really was not, in any sense of the word, covering him, not that Stiles objects to Derek’s habit of sleeping nude, and then dips his bedhead over the edge as he rummages for something on the floor. “Shit. Peter, the hell did you put—”

“Derek, this is a rental. You never clean that damn thing properly and I am _not_ explaining to the landlord why there is the outline of a bloody sword engrained in the flooring,” Peter says, also starting to get up. Also nude.

Stiles blinks, watching the two of them, because…they’re naked and very blinkworthy that way and _no_ , it does not get _old_ , because you get jaded about horrible things like science run amok and forbidden Yuggothian hybrids, not hot men you date. But okay, they have been together a while now, in a happily stable way, so it’s only a couple blinks and then he clears his throat. “Uh…”

“You’re just pissed off that Scott guilted his girlfriend into letting me and not you keep it. Also, whatever, blood’s the _easiest_ stain around here to explain,” Derek says. He reverse sit-ups himself upright, without hands, just a lot of casually impressive flex all through his core, and then blinks at the world a lot like Stiles was just doing. His nostrils twitch, and then he reaches behind himself to dig out his crumpled shirt. “I’m still taking the golf clubs.”

“By all means, and I’ll happily let you come up with a convincing story for the sheriff for why we’re teeing off with unusually sticky red paint in the middle of the preserve,” Peter says, as he sits on the end of the bed and pulls various things out of the end-table drawer: candles, wolfsbane vials, pilfered Argent taser. “I will never understand why Chris insists on thinking _I_ need a tail when I’m in town and not him…”

“Hey,” Stiles says, louder, and both of their heads swivel towards him. “So…where are we going?”

Sometimes Stiles really wishes that getting a head-on photo of a werewolf didn’t require either two solid minutes of chanting or military-grade lens filters, since it makes proving Derek and Peter have the exact same expressions too much trouble for candids. “You’re calling your father and it’s the middle of the night,” Peter says. “I assume we need to kill some—”

Just then the door swings open. Stiles gets yanked backward by the shoulder, provoking a reflexive arm-flail that means Derek has to grunt and duck instead of jumping in front of him. Peter moves there instead, and for a second Stiles’ father stares at Peter’s probably-glowing eyes.

Then he frowns and looks up, just as the scan finishes going over him. “Huh,” Stiles says, looking at his phone-screen.

“Stiles,” his thankfully fully-clothed father says. Then stops, and lifts one hand to absently rub at the side of his head. Behind him in the hall, a half-naked Chris Argent is being uncharacteristically awkward with a partly-strung crossbow; Chris noisily disarms it as Peter irritably bundles the bedsheet around his waist. “Stiles. Did you just—did you just—do you _really_ think that mind-controlled me would storm into your bedroom without knocking when you and Peter were playing footsie all through Melissa’s _pot roast_?”

“Well, you emailed me and we’re literally in the same house and, I mean, _why_?” Stiles says defensively. “I just figured I’d check. Also, pot roast is your thing, you know I think her pork shoulder’s where it’s at.”

His dad stares at him. Honestly, even without the proprietary University diagnostics, Stiles can tell the man’s safe, sane, and himself just from that very specific air of _son, really?_ exasperation. “We’ve been together all evening. We had dinner, we went over patrols, I even said fine, you’re cleared to visit the Nemeton, and now it’s what, three in the morning—”

“Two-twenty,” Chris mutters. “One.”

“Needy for approval, are we,” Peter mutters.

“—and you called me using the emergency alarm when I’m just upstairs to check if I’m still me? Because I sent you an _email_?” Stiles’ dad finishes, with just the smallest irritated pause over the byplay.

Stiles opens his mouth, then closes it. He stares to move his phone to where he can show his father, but just the look on the man’s face tells him how well that’s going to go over. 

Something shifts in his dad’s expression, and he slouches back, still pushing at the side of his head. “Look, I told you, it’s weird but it’s gotten tested with everything anyone can think of, and it’s not malicious, Stiles,” his dad sighs. “We even ran a séance with Scott’s pet and it said it still wants werewolves around and likes Scott. So I know you feel sort of—attached to it, but it's not really on you to solve everything about the tree, son.”

“Well, yeah, I know, but it is kind of central to my dissertation proposal and—wait, I thought we were talking about you being weird, not the Nemeton,” Stiles says.

His dad stares at him again. “Yeah, we are. Because me emailing you is now weird.”

“Because it’s—I mean, look, it’s even all formal-looking, you don’t have any Cthulhu memes or any other hallmarks that Melissa’s corrupting your mind—”

“For your information, _Allison_ finds most of those,” Melissa calls from somewhere in the neighborhood of the staircase, sounding cranky.

“And it’s…what is this…” Stiles mutters, actually reading through said email, since he’d clicked into it to show his dad. “…it’s got a…why am I staring at customs paperwork, what would we want from Brichester…oh. Wait. What? Don’t we _have_ a botany department?”

“…you didn’t even _read_ it before you called me?” his father explodes.

Stiles looks up. His dad works his mouth a couple times, one hand bobbing up and down, but he never actually makes the gesture. He just abruptly turns around. This makes him nearly run into Chris, who twitches when Stiles’ dad grabs the middle of his crossbow and shifts it from pointing at the wall to the floor. Then Chris backs up and Stiles’ dad looks a little embarrassed, muttering something that Chris shrugs and mutters back to.

“Look, Stiles,” Stiles’ dad says, finally glancing back. “Just…go to sleep?”

“But you forwarded me a foreign-expert visitation plan!” Stiles says, sounding whiny. He _feels_ whiny. This whole thing has been a false alarm, and if he stops to think about it, he’s going to realize that he’s just interrupted a perfectly good night for six people who are all capable of rubbing it in his face, not to mention he probably will have to retake the paranoia screens a couple weeks early to comply with Miskatonic’s access standards for the main Nemeton site, and yet…he and his dad _had_ been around each other for several hours and not a _single_ mention of this. “This is time-stamped before dinner! You thought I’d read it and not bring any of this up?”

“Well, okay, I was kind of surprised, but I wasn’t going to run a sanity-check on you just because you haven’t been paying attention,” his dad says, stopping and looking back.

Stiles…gives him that one. “Okay, but—”

“It is two-whatever in the morning. Get some goddamn sleep and in the _actual_ morning you can go crazy over it, Stiles,” his dad says, pointedly turning back around. “I told you you’re working too hard…crossbow? In the house?”

That’s to Chris, not Stiles, and Chris shrugs again as he and Stiles’ father walk off. “Easier to aim in tight quarters than a machete.”

“Well, at least I only hit what I mean to hit,” Derek mutters, to which Chris snorts when Stiles’ dad isn’t looking.

As soon as Stiles’ dad and Chris round the corner, Peter gets off the bed and goes over to shut the door. He starts to come back, pauses, and then exhales slowly. “Stiles?”

“Sorry,” Stiles says, and then shakes himself and looks up, first at Peter and then at Derek. “No, really, I’m sorry, that was…yeah. Totally on me, though. If Dad’s still mad at breakfast, I’ll tell him that.”

“He’s right, you should try and catch up on your sleep,” Peter says after a moment. The pause is him holding back from acknowledging Stiles’ fault, which with Peter is one of the infallible signs he really cares about someone’s opinion. He climbs back on the bed and throws the blankets over himself, and in the process, his hand finds its way onto Stiles’ thigh. “You do have a three-year minimum on your dissertation, you know. And whatever’s going on now, I’m sure it’s not going to eat that much into your time.”

“Yeah, I know, I just…it’s really that weird that the University wants an outside person to look at it?” Stiles says, as his eyes drift back to his dad’s email. “Botany’s a core discipline too, and from Brichester…oh, _shit_ , really?”

Peter’s hand stops creeping up Stiles’ thigh. “But it says he’s a graduate student, same as you,” he says, peering at Stiles’ phone.

“Okay, yeah, but Athelstan’s kind of legendary,” Stiles says absently, now impatiently jiggling his phone as the attachment downloads.

Then, idiot that he is, he realizes and crawls over Peter to swing out from the bed and scrabble—Peter patiently grabbing his knees—till he can get his bag off a nearby chair and get his laptop out of it. He flips it open and boots it up and logs on, and gets that visa paperwork downloaded where he doesn’t have to open it up in a separate app to get past all the redactions.

“Are you really going back to sleep?” Peter says.

To Derek, who when Stiles looks up is somehow curling his not-insubstantial body into the gap between Stiles’ back and the headboard. “Nobody’s getting killed, ‘m get up to speed later,” Derek mumbles. “’s not like he’s gonna, and you’re smelling like you want to kill this guy already, need some while I can get it.”

“Don’t kill Athelstan, he’s still got to publish part four of his series on Averonian mosses,” Stiles says automatically. “Also, if he’s coming here, maybe I can get some dirt on what really went down in Vyones. Let’s see, here’s the special accommodations requests…”

He looks up. Peter looks back at him, expression properly arranged into ‘go on,’ and for a moment Stiles…almost wants to go for it. But then Derek snuffles behind them and Peter glances over, and he’s not just annoyed at the interruption. He’s envious too—and he would be tired, Stiles belatedly remembers. They’re down less about the Nemeton (hence why Stiles is twitchy about it, his dad didn’t even bother to let him know there was something going on before he got here) than about Derek and Peter getting called back by Laura to run some hunters out of town, and they just wrapped up an all-day patrol.

“I can break it down for you in the morning,” Stiles says. “No, really. It’s not like he’s going to show up at breakfast, and Dad’s…he’s right, it’s not an emergency. And you do better at scoping out potential threats on a full belly of pastries, you know that.”

“If it’s important to know who this man is—and given how impressed you seem to be about him, clearly it is,” Peter starts. His expression warms back up as he looks back at Stiles. Then his eyes narrow. “If you’re going to stay up anyway…” he peers over Stiles’ shoulder “…working your way through _sixty-seven pages_ of special magic accommodations?”

“He’s not a threat,” Stiles sighs. He presses his lips together, then makes himself turn and put his phone and laptop on the bedside table. A tiny part of him is dying inside, but bigger pieces are very aware that this is the only way he’s going to keep Peter from just staying up with him. “Really, he’s not. He does very interesting research on very weird fungi, and his brain still isn’t in a Mi-Go tube, and he’s not on Security’s shit-list. If he was, Dad wouldn’t be so chill about it, and…okay, that is a lot of paperwork, but it’s stuff that we can digest over breakfast. Really.”

Peter presses his lips together. Then cocks his head. “Stiles,” he says, not looking down at the hand Stiles has just planted against his belly. “Stiles, are you going to get up as soon as your father settles down for the night, and log back in?”

“Well…not if I have a reason to stay put?” Stiles says hopefully. While worming his way a little closer, curling his fingertips along the soft ridges of Peter’s abdominal muscles. He tips his head up…and Peter leans in and then snorts in his face. “Okay, look, I won’t _sneak_ over you. I’ll poke you so you’re fully aware of what I’m doing and can come if you want, all right? But first, fine, let’s get in a few more hours. Okay?”

“Very well,” Peter says, still looking skeptical. But he folds himself back under the covers with Stiles, and mostly acts like he doesn’t notice when Stiles snakes one arm back to retrieve his phone. “We’ll take this up later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leng is a Cthulhu Mythos country whose exact location varies from author to author, but usually it's connected to Asia (and in older stories has a lot of racist overtones). It's traditionally a bucket-list layover for evil magicians but I'm reimagining it as more of an especially eccentric sister university to Miskatonic.
> 
> The Mi-Go are also known as the 'fungi from Yuggoth,' even though they're not really fungi so much as giant intelligent crustaceans who like to store people's brains in tubes for easy conversation later.


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles is admittedly short of sleep, and his dad’s probably right about it messing with his ability to accurately assess threats, but he’s got a good reason to be: the Nemeton is acting up. Namely, it’s switched from propagating baby clones from the roots to producing what seem to be viable acorns, except for the fact that they’re so weirdly colored that regular people thought the preserve was running some sort of out-of-season Easter-egg hunt, and returned them by the bucket to the Miskatonic team running an “ecological capsule” study. When someone asked via Quint what was up, the Nemeton apparently stated that it didn’t want to talk to itself anymore, hence why the baby clones weren’t working. 

In pseudo- or real Cthulhic land, this is weird, since it presupposes an interest beyond survival of its own immediate consciousness. Granted, by Miskatonic standards, since the Nemeton isn’t doing it by trying to forcibly hijack another sentient organism’s bodily or psychological integrity, this is considered fairly low on the threat spectrum. Which alone should be worthy of an unironic alert text, _Dad_.

Instead, Scott’s the one who initially put him on it, since his best buddy takes his duties as the Nemeton’s favorite werewolf very seriously (meaning extra leafleting about the dangers of unattended campfires during fire season, _not_ asking it for a batrachian intervention with the constant stream of other werewolves who want to throw down) and asked about it as soon as Stiles got into town. 

“I would’ve told you sooner if I knew it was that strange, but Mom figured since they were keeping the Security alert local, it couldn’t be that bad,” Scott says, for probably the fiftieth time, though that isn’t anywhere in his tone. He and Quint just look very worried for Stiles’ opinion. “We even asked and the tree just said it still, um, likes me—”

“Yeah, I know, but still, this is literally supposed to be my dissertation topic and I totally missed it!” Stiles says, as he dumps out another bag of yarn onto the ground.

“He missed the fact that us finding weirdly-colored acorns is supposed to be related to a tentacle tree?” mutters Boyd.

“I mean, I guess because neither of them look like they’ve looked at a color wheel lately?” Erica says. “But then again, the tentacle green is just boring when that purple is downright puke-inducing. We’re going to have to seriously tone it down for the new knits.”

Scott glances over his shoulder at the two of them, who just stare back. He starts to say something, but has to stop and grab Quint as he scrambles up Scott’s shoulder and appears to be about to take a leap into the air. Then he turns back to Stiles. “Are you sure you want to put up all this stuff right when we’re going to have visitors?”

“If I don’t do it now, I’m positive Athelstan’s going to ask why _wouldn’t_ we try miasmatic curvature modeling! It’s the totally obvious conclusion once you’ve read his—oh.” Stiles sticks his current ball of yarn under one arm and gets his phone out to show Scott the diagrams. “Sorry, I forget not everybody has _Annals of Stygian Bioinformatics_ in their feed. Here, see, he wrote up this really awesome case study I’m using as a basis here. Honestly, I should’ve thought of this sooner. Or our Botany department, come to think of it.”

“Well, so this is…like one of those mathematics models you and Lydia use?” Scott guesses, squinting at the phone. One of his hands comes out like he’s going to tilt it, then jerks back as he smiles sheepishly.

Then he turns sharply around and tugs at Quint, who’s still trying to scale his shoulder. Quint lets out a confused chatter, tail-tentacles twitching, but lets go to grip at Scott’s fingers instead.

“Are you seriously denying the rest of us networking time with Quint?” Erica says from behind him, hands still raised for the aborted Quint landing. “C’mon, these woods are for _all_ werewolves, not just you.”

“I’m not letting you measure him for Etsy plushies if you’re just going to make fun of Stiles for trying to figure out what’s going on,” Scott says stubbornly, still looking sternly at her. He fiddles with his pocket, then pops out a regular-looking acorn to keep Quint happy. “If you’re not interested, why are you watching us, anyway?”

Erica and Boyd look at each other, and then at him. “There’s an asshole hunter running around?” Boyd says.

“Oh, right,” Scott says, with a quick glance at Stiles, who’s just gotten a text from his dad. Then he frowns. “But wait, I thought Mom said we were all going to convene on that tonight, and _Laura_ said fine.”

Stiles’ dad’s text tells Stiles that since he didn’t want Stiles to freak out again, he’s sending the text to let Stiles know there’s an update from Miskatonic about Athelstan in his inbox. Stiles flicks through his emojis to find the right combination of flat mouth and squinty eyes and sends back a thanks. Then he looks up in time to catch the tail-end of Erica’s mocking hand-and-mouth puppetshow along with what Scott’s saying. “Asshole hunter like you somehow think you’re gonna nail them before Derek or Peter, or asshole like you’ve totally forgotten I can warp them into the maw of Azathoth without breaking a sweat?”

“Asshole like, as much as we hate asshole hunters, nobody wants to walk around in a preserve covered in the shit of hundreds of three-headed frogs who’ve eaten him,” Erica says. “So yeah, Laura said we’re gonna wait to take this one down but _also_ , Scott’s not allowed to come in case the Nemeton makes a big deal out of it. She figures if it’s trying to make babies, it might be more easily spooked than usual.”

Scott shifts uncomfortably, and Stiles totally expects him to point out that not only had he not asked for that, nobody had even known the Nemeton could work through animals at that point. But since it’s Scott, instead he sighs and ducks his head. “Allison already kind of said the same thing, so that’s why I’m spending the day with Stiles—I mean, sorry, that’s not the—”

“Hey, look, I know what’s in your heart, bro, and I know you love me even if you’re not buddying up on one of my analytical trials,” Stiles says, patting Scott on the shoulder. He puts his phone away and takes out the yarn again. “Also, he’s got a point, if you’re not going to be useful here, you can go guard us from one of the observation bubbles. It’s not like you can’t access _all_ the sensors from there.”

Erica and Boyd don’t move. They look a little weird, like Stiles has somehow caught them out, and Scott—who is genuinely invested in his niceness, but who also knows his fellow werewolves—blinks innocently at them. “Oh, did Laura tell you not to lose me like with the vampires last month?”

“Your _mom_ , more like it,” Boyd mutters. Then he seems to decide it’s not worth trying to come up with some cool one-liner and actually edges over towards Stiles. “So what is with all the string? What would we even be helping with?”

“And if you need help, why aren’t the double-trouble porn stars helping you with it?” Erica tags on.

“Because sometimes Derek and Peter have to be responsible adults and help out Laura, and since I’m _also_ a responsible adult, we set check-in times with each other and then we go do our respective things,” Stiles says. He measures out a couple lengths of yarn, checks the diagram on his phone, and then holds the yarn out to Scott to slice. “Also, the yarn’s because I want to check for the presence of geospatial anomalies but redoing the sensors would both take longer and also require I file a formal request, and that just seems unnecessary.” 

Erica nods sagely. “Oh, hey, you could’ve just said you don’t wanna tell your dad or Scott’s mom.”

Stiles glares at her, to the point that Scott has to nudge him to get him to realize the yarn’s done. In small doses Erica’s funny, but prolonged exposure usually leaves him ready to manufacture an exit. The thing is, she’s clearly smart enough to follow him when he’s talking about Cthulhic influences and when she wants to, she can retain the Very Important Warnings he tries to dole out about them. But unlike Lydia, she’s not actually interested in learning anything beyond how to make money and not die, and unlike Allison, she’s not remotely polite enough to hide when she doesn’t care about something.

“Okay, so this is a boogeyman detector,” Erica says.

Stiles opens his mouth, then closes it. “We’re looking for _anomalies_ in _geospatial orientation_ that could disclose whether we have _extradimensional leakage_.”

“That sounds like boogeyman to me,” Boyd says, and then he and Erica bump forearms.

“I think the point he’s trying to make is that we’re just checking and we’re not trying to find something or someone we’re going to fight,” Scott says, sliding slightly between Stiles and the other two. He reaches down and picks up a ball of yarn, and then starts to let it unravel. “And we’re going to be here for a while, so like Stiles was saying, if you want to take a seat, the tents are over there.”

Erica glances over at them, and then looks at Scott. “Do you promise you’re not going to run off and not-rescue rescue your heavily-armed super-soldier girlfriend if she texts you?”

“I…I can’t do that,” Scott says, finally sounding a little irritated.

“Okay, whatever, you’re not helping. At least try not to stand in the focal point,” Stiles says, taking Scott by the arm.

He pulls Scott off as Erica and Boyd hastily retreat to the other side of the old Nemeton site, which is now the home of six-ish saplings (the constant twining and occasional temporary mitosis makes it hard to count). Then, after checking his orientation, he starts knotting another level to the model he’s trying to make.

“Sorry about that,” Scott mutters. He fiddles with his yarn until Stiles tells him the next ten lengths that need to be cut, and then looks a little relieved to have something productive to do. “It’s just…pack stuff. I’m sure Derek and Peter said something already, but it’s not about you, it’s just…”

“About you, and the downside of being well-known as the only resident werewolf who was ecologically-minded before that got backed up with the threat of batrachian death, I get it,” Stiles says. The yarn he’s currently tying starts to feel a little not-there and he mutters a stabilizing charm. “I’d be jealous too.”

Scott flushes, then cuts some extra yarn for Quint to play with. “I don’t think they’re jealous, I think they just don’t want Mom to get mad at them…should it be doing that?”

“Oh, that’s normal,” Stiles mutters, as he suddenly realizes where he put the extra loop and hastily unknots the yarn. He pauses to let his fingernails solidify again and reknots things. “I know it looks weird, but it doesn’t hurt and as long as it doesn’t get past my knuckles, there’s only a zero-point-zero-zero-zero-three chance it’s a permanent loss. And that’s if all I’ve got to rely on is the first-aid kit back there, and I’ve got a ton of training I can use before I need that.”

“Well, okay, it just looked…” Scott’s a little slow the next time Stiles flips a loop out for him to cut “…are you sure you shouldn’t check this with someone first? I mean, even if the University rules don’t require it for this, maybe just…I don’t know, Lydia?”

“Why would we want _Lydia_ here?” Boyd not-so-stage-whispers from the other side of the site. “I thought we were trying to keep the casualty rate down.”

“Yeah, but also, she knows the same alien math stuff that Stiles does, and she scares him,” Erica says.

Scott winces, then turns around and looks at the two of them. Nothing happens, but then Quint, who’s climbed up to the top of Scott’s head, suddenly flares all of his tail-tentacles, and Boyd and Erica hastily make like they have a very important text to study.

“I’m so sorry. If they’re really bothering you, I can give Laura a call,” Scott says, half-annoyed, half-embarrassed.

“Nah, look, they aren’t any worse than having to present to the Ethics and Repression Board,” Stiles says. He has a relieved Scott cut him the yarn. “And if it makes you feel any better, what I’m doing here isn’t exactly untested. I mean, okay, I’ve never tried it on a _non_ -Cthulhic entity, but the Nemeton is pseudo and that’s well within the Board guidelines. _Lydia_ doesn’t even try to go around those.”

“I wasn’t trying to say you don’t know what you’re doing,” Scott says, back to looking hangdog, even though Stiles honestly hadn’t been taking offense. “It just looked freaky for a second. And—and however good this visiting expert is, I don’t think you need to prove anything to him.”

Stiles blinks. Then lowers his hands and turns to face the other man, because this next bit doesn’t really have any good stopping points and he doesn’t actually want any more mutated appendages. “Sorry?”

“Even if he’s got a bunch of academic credentials, well, this _is_ Beacon Hills,” Scott says, with that very earnest stubbornness that’s specific to just him. “Nothing here is ever like what people have seen before. That’s why Miskatonic opened up a whole branch here, right? And anybody who comes in thinking they know what to expect, they’re _really_ lucky Mom and me think everybody deserves a chance to avoid getting hurt.”

“Scott, my buddy, did you just express a sense of outrage at people’s lack of gratitude for you?” Stiles says. Then, as Scott’s starting to look a little horrified at himself, he grins and swings an arm over the other man’s shoulders. “Because if so, I am _all_ for it. You invest in all the patrols and stuff, people should respect.”

For a couple seconds, Scott stammers like he’s going to take back what he just said, but then he seems to realize that that’s not going to undo reality. He ducks his head and scruffs at his hair, then offers up a reluctant smile.

“But seriously, you’re okay, right?” he asks.

“Me?” Stiles says, blinking. Then he looks at his half-done yarning. “What, because I’m—no, really, I’m just mad I didn’t think of this before. I’m not worried Athelstan’s gonna come in and swipe all of my research or something, he’s got a good rep. I just wanna try some stuff so I can talk to him about the results.”

“Oh, so…it’s a _good_ thing he’s coming to look at this,” Scott says.

That is…a complicated question, but at breakfast Stiles’ dad had still been making little snide comments about push notifications and email filters so they hadn’t really gotten into why Miskatonic has an entire Botany department and still needs to borrow someone from Brichester. And none of the other graduate students had been around when Stiles had shown up to the site, although if they had to temporarily clear out so Laura and the other Beacon Hills regulars could run down a hunter without additional weirdness, that makes sense.

“Well, yeah, there are about five people in his subdiscipline worldwide and the other four of them are either barely sane or complete sociopathic assholes,” Stiles finally says, since Scott’s waiting on him and has clearly picked up on some kind of unease with the situation. Anyway, Stiles’ finely-attuned sense of academic politicking tells him that _Athelstan_ isn’t the real problem here. “He writes good papers and Dad’s actually met him and says he _listens_ , so if we’re trying to figure out whether the Nemeton’s gotten reinfected with cosmic alien stuff, he’s great to have in town. Why, did you think I was worried about him?”

Scott looks embarrassed. “…maybe a little? Sorry, I guess I was just thinking of the symposium.”

“Oh, no, totally not the same thing,” Stiles says. “Athelstan should be fine. Minimum drama.”

* * *

“Ragnar,” Athelstan finally brings himself to say. “Do you happen to have a second?”

The dirt flying onto Athelstan’s feet continues, and for long enough that he starts to wonder if perhaps he wasn’t heard. He jiggles the dirt off and steps around the hole, only to hop back when the angle of the dirt changes. Then he thinks the better of peering in, and is just about to clear his throat instead when Ragnar abruptly hops out of the hole to stand right in front of him, quizzical look just about visible under the soil stains.

Athelstan barely avoids swallowing his tongue. He _does_ drop his phone, but Ragnar scoops that up in one hand without even looking. The man dangles it from his fingers so Athelstan can take it back without getting dirt on himself.

Nodding a thanks, Athelstan quickly checks that what he needs is still up on the screen. “Sorry, I know you’re busy—”

“Eh, not really,” Ragnar says, sounding as if he’s nearly on top of Athelstan.

Athelstan starts to look up and sees a stretch of mud-smeared pectoral just beyond the end of his phone. “Anyway, it’s about the customs forms,” he mutters, hurriedly redirecting his eyes. “Did you really mean to put these?”

Ragnar cranes himself around, then leans back and flashes a smile as Athelstan turns the phone for him to see. “Which ones, the axes?”

“The—” Athelstan starts, only to be cut off by a sudden _thunk_ and then a long string of Norwegian curses.

Rolling his eyes, Ragnar lets the motion of his head twist himself around till he’s facing the hole again. The curses stop, then come again, and then Ragnar’s brother jumps out of the hole, rubbing at his bloody jaw. He irritably says something in Norwegian and Ragnar sighs and jerks his chin towards Athelstan.

“Does he need to know that you’re nearly fifty and you still can’t dig a straight grave?” Rollo says in slightly-accented and clearly-annoyed English.

“I am not the one shoveling rocks into my own face,” Ragnar points out, unruffled. “And we are discussing travel plans.”

“Well, did you want to discuss that before or after you are sure you can leave this town without him turning into—” and then Rollo reverts to Norwegian in time for Ragnar’s shoulders to spread and his neck to swell slightly in a growl too low for Athelstan to hear. 

Rollo grins back, wide and full of sharp teeth. He’s even taller and more muscled than Ragnar, and even though he lived through the twenty years Ragnar spent in a jar, the only signs of age on him are a few ribbons of gray twisting through the long brown braid running down his back. 

“Look, I didn’t want to interrupt, the travel coordinator just wanted to know if you knew the metal they’re made of so they can take that into account with the warding,” Athelstan hastily says, hoping to de-escalate the situation.

“The what?” Rollo says, distracted.

Ragnar’s head twitches to the side, which Athelstan is coming to learn means he’s about to launch something.

“The axes,” Athelstan says. “The metal they’re made of, because there are enough of them that it could affect the—”

With a croaking roar, a mangled fishbelly-white form lurches halfway out of the hole, one handless arm reaching for Rollo’s ankle. Both he and Ragnar jump back, shifting, as Athelstan yelps and yanks at the angles of the hole without thinking.

The form distorts lengthwise, its roar going suddenly high-pitched. Then it abruptly fractures into several bloody pieces that fall back into the hole as Athelstan, flushing, restores dimensional reality.

“Oh…damn it,” Athelstan mutters, thinking about the fresh paperwork he’ll have to file with Brichester’s Norwegian liaison. They’ve already complained that he’s had them open more incident reports than any other British researcher on record, and the last time he’d video-called them, they had started absently sharpening a medieval-looking letter-opener halfway through it. “Sorry.”

Rollo looks at him. Then at the hole. The man tilts forward a little, then moves back and gives Ragnar a dirty look. “If he can do that, why did I spend an entire evening chasing that—” presumably a Norwegian insult “—across town?”

“Well, it was not _his_ loan they were trying to collect,” Ragnar says, and then the hairs on the back of Athelstan’s neck prickle as the two werewolves size each other up again.

It’s not _quite_ the same feeling that he gets whenever someone is trying to breach the intervening dimensions between Earth and a Great Old One, but it’s in the same school of impending violence and chaos. And also, they’re both just within the range of potential after-incident emanations from the dismembered corpse. Athelstan braces himself and opens his mouth.

“Someone wants to see you,” Lagertha suddenly says, appearing out of nowhere. She also catches his phone for him as it drops from twitchy fingers.

Rollo snorts, then raises one hand to flick some gore off his shoulder, and the tension in the air dissipates. “I’m in high demand tonight.”

“Not you,” Lagertha says, brows raised, smile slightly on the wrong side of ‘sweet,’ and then she pulls Athelstan aside as if to speak to him. “Athelstan. It’s a woman?”

Ragnar, curiosity peaked, ambles after them, and after a second of looking miffed, Rollo tags along. Athelstan had been keeping half an eye on the hole and breathes a sigh of relief when they’re both out of range.

“I already called Gunnhild. She says they will adjust something remotely so do not touch it,” Lagertha says casually, and then gives Athelstan a friendlier smile when he blinks at her. “She does not want more trouble any more than we do.”

“You told her about the—” Athelstan hisses, waving at the hole. Then he grimaces and stops himself. “I mean, sorry, I…I just hadn’t…”

“I know, she mentioned you had not filed whatever it is they want filed, and I told her that that was not your form to complete and she is sending it to me,” Lagertha says, with a pat to his arm. “And I thought we had to tell them about Rollo because of the magic counting us?”

Rollo perks up and asks Ragnar something, to which Ragnar grunts. The two of them had been rather talkative when Rollo had first arrived earlier in the day—granted, a lot of it had been incomprehensible except for the raised voices and dramatic facial expressions, but they’d clearly been discussing whatever it was at length. But ever since the fighting ended, Ragnar’s been distinctly uncommunicative with his brother, and it’s even more distinctly annoying Rollo.

Lagertha senses it too, and throws a long look over her shoulder at Ragnar before she leans into Athelstan. “This woman says she is from Brichester. I asked her for her university ID and it had the symbols you showed us, and she did not turn strange colors when she stepped over the runestones.”

“She didn’t try and curse you?” Athelstan asks, only half-paying attention as he’s shooting a quick text off to Gunnhild. Ecbert had promised that the Elder Patrol was only interested in making sure they leave the country without any more Shub-Niggurath incursions, but given they have a little more than a day till their flight, he’d really been hoping that they wouldn’t have to mention the vendetta Rollo had brought along with him. “Or mention anything about the King in Yellow, or—”

“Oh, no, no, she just told me that she would appreciate if she could speak to you as soon as possible, and that Ecbert is tracking her,” Lagertha says in a soothing voice. She rubs at Athelstan’s arm some more. “She says she is the new doctoral fellow, and is here for your specimens. But she… _is_ French.”

Athelstan looks up. “Fre—oh, did she happen to give you her name? Is it Gisla?”

Lagertha and Ragnar, who’d caught up to Athelstan’s other side, both look a little surprised. And they’re clearly relaxing from some sort of tense moment; Athelstan glances back at Rollo, but he’s a few feet away, not walking directly behind them, and appears to be just watching with a mixture of irritation and reluctant interest.

“Yes,” Lagertha says slowly. “So you know her.”

“Oh, yes, she is another candidate in the depart—” Athelstan belatedly thinks about why they might be worried “—oh, and also, she really is French. Ah, French-French, not…anyway, she’s supposed to be here. She’s taking over the rest of the Brichester fellowship while I’m off in America.”

“Ah,” Lagertha says, relaxing. “That is good.”

Athelstan’s only half-listening again, since he’s spotted someone moving over by the temporary guest-house the Patrol’s put them in. “Gisla?” he says, blinking, as the figure moves into the light. “Oh…you didn’t let her in? You made her wait on the porch?”

“It is a nice day out. It was not much trouble to her while I asked you,” Lagertha says, not exactly defensive.

“Gisla!” Athelstan calls out, waving his hand. He breaks into a trot, then remembers he’s in company. _Then_ he remembers what had happened to the assistant librarian who’d tried an Asenath Waite on Gisla, and waves harder. “Gisla! Hello! I’m so sorry, I had to step back here to—”

“Your werewolf said she was not sure whether I was here to harm you or not,” Gisla announces, striding up to him with a grim look at her face. He pulls up and her frown deepens as he pants a bit to get enough air back for speech. “She seems intelligent for her kind.”

Athelstan blinks hard. “I’m—sorry, I think I just misheard you, did you—”

“But I do not want your personal details. I have meetings with the Patrol to fix Brichester’s reputation. Where is the paperwork?” Gisla demands.

“Inside, on my laptop,” Athelstan says. He didn’t mishear, he thinks, and that’s just…incredibly condescending. “I told them not to let anyone in without checking with me, since we just put some temporary patches on the wards here. And, sorry, but did you really just say—”

“Do you have your inventory done?” Gisla goes on, as if he hadn’t even said anything. “I do not want to make the Patrol think all Brichester personnel are unprepared.”

“Yes, I have everything done and ready to turn over. So there’s no need for you to act as if I don’t know what I’m doing, and there’s certainly no need for you to be discriminatory,” Athelstan snaps.

There’s a huff from right behind him, unexpectedly close, and Athelstan shies a little. He glimpses Ragnar’s and Lagertha’s amused, appreciative faces before he turns back round to face Gisla.

Who is unimpressed. “I am pointing out that werewolves statistically dominate on-campus arrests and Ecbert will not even _tell_ me what you did to annoy the Patrol into pushing you out.”

“Come to think of it,” Athelstan says after a moment of seething outrage. “I don’t think the wards account for you. Please wait here, I’ll be just a second with the papers and then you can be on your way.”

And then he storms indoors. He and Gisla have never been friends, but he had thought they had mutual respect for each other. “Besides, those statistics are fundamentally skewed,” he mutters to himself as he grabs his laptop.

“Yes?” Ragnar says, and while Athelstan recovers from the usual yelp, the other man drops into the nearest chair. “We are not the most criminal?”

“Ah—well, arrests don’t indicate ultimate guilt, and—and anyway, they’re skewed because werewolves do get arrested the most, but that’s because they’re generally doing something like fighting each other, where you’re still _alive_ to be arrested,” Athelstan says. He sits down at the table and opens his laptop, then pauses to flex his fingers. They hurt, he thinks, and then he realizes he’s been clenching his hands the entire time. “If you factor in that the overwhelming majority of campus security calls end in an ambulance ride or calling for body disposal, I wouldn’t consider them the real threat at Brichester.”

“Then they are not good at being werewolves,” Ragnar says, grinning, as Lagertha gives his chair a kick.

She’s at the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, looking decidedly less entertained by all of this. “This is why I thought she should wait outside. She did not ask for you as if she really cared how you were.”

Athelstan plugs in a warded external drive and then pushes back a bit while things download to it. He’s calmed a little now. “That probably got under her skin. Gisla is very, very good and she knows it.”

“She cannot be the only one who is good at what she studies. I _know_ she is not,” Lagertha mutters. She turns away from the backyard as she speaks, her expression slowly smoothing out from its displeased expression. By the time she steps over to Ragnar, she’s actually smiling, at Athelstan. “I do not think Gunnhild is going to like her very much.”

“Well, she’s probably going to be an improvement on me. At the very least, she doesn’t have my little issues with, ah, self-control,” Athelstan can’t help pointing out.

Lagertha shrugs as she takes a seat on Ragnar’s knee, which clearly is her using him and not the other way around, even if Ragnar’s grin only widens at it. She pushes his hand off her waist, the way you’d flick away a fly, but ignores the other hand he sneaks over her knee. “Do _you_ think this will cause trouble?” she asks.

“Well, no, I have all the documents together, I finished them last night but just didn’t think to get them onto the drive—”

For a moment Lagertha looks…a little off. She’s still giving Athelstan a warm look, so the odd shadow over her expression doesn’t seem to be about him, but she also seems…concerned. It’s almost as if she thinks she’s about to start something she’d rather not. “I meant Rollo. And the fight, with the dead body.”

“It had nothing to do with him,” Ragnar mutters, suddenly dead serious. Then he turns to Athelstan, his stare intense enough that Athelstan reflexively checks his hands even though they’re far enough apart that there’s no way Athelstan is infringing on his space. “It had nothing to do with you. It was ou—it was _Rollo’s_ fight.”

“Then why did he have it _here_?” Lagertha says irritably. When Ragnar starts to answer her, she puts two fingers over his mouth and continues glaring over them at him. “Yes, yes, you _told_ him, so he came anyway?”

Ragnar moves his head back and says something sharp in Norwegian, then grimaces and obviously backtracks. “He’s my brother. What did you expect me to do? Knock him over the head when he showed up? _That_ was going to stop it.”

For some reason, they insist on translating nearly everything into English for Athelstan’s benefit, even when the conversations seem rather private. Athelstan certainly hasn’t made any fuss about it, or at least he doesn’t think he has; he can’t always control his expressions. “I don’t think it’s really that bad,” he says, mentally reminding himself to _start_ the Norwegian language app he’s downloaded. “It’s just a dead body—that is, I don’t mean to trivialize the whole—of course it’s more than that, it—they were a person and—”

“Eh, we didn’t like him anyway, it’s just Rollo was the one who he had a vendetta with and Rollo does not need us to fight his challenges,” Ragnar says dismissively. He’s still watching Athelstan—both of them are, and doing it in that way that Athelstan’s coming to realize means they’re afraid he’s going to try to stop dating them. “You do not think this will stop the flight?”

Admittedly, he was rather back-and-forth about things at first, but he’s said he wants to try and he doesn’t make half-hearted commitments. Mainly he doesn’t make commitments, outside of his studies, so…never mind, his insecurities can wait. “To America?” he says, realizing they’re waiting on him. “No, I don’t see why it would.”

“They are not upset about you—” Lagertha waves her hand a little “—breaching the wards here…”

“Yes, there’s a body, but it’s rather ordinary and the composting area should have no issues in dealing with it. Actually, if anything, I might have to go amend the topsoil to raise its mutation levels but I can check that in the morning. They’ll be annoyed about more paperwork, but I can deal with that,” Athelstan frowns. They are truly worried, and oddly, that seems to bring his own concerns into perspective. The Patrol will be irritated but at the end of the day, neither them (nor him, for that matter) really want to test how extensive Athelstan’s abilities are. But Ragnar and Lagertha…are they really that on edge about him? If so, that’s not fair and he should straighten that—something occurs to him. “Is this about what Gisla was saying out there? Or did she say something to you?”

Lagertha’s lips thin a little before she speaks. “I do not like her. But you did say she knows what she is doing.”

“Oh, she does, but also she’s just—she’s like that. Well, this is the first time with me, to be honest, but…anyway, if Ecbert says we’re going to California and Miskatonic’s approved it, she can’t do anything about it,” Athelstan says, with renewed annoyance at Gisla. His laptop pings and he glances down, then pulls out the flash drive. He’d been thinking to just get her away as soon as possible, but now he’s starting to think he needs to put up with her long enough to have a word. “I’m going to talk to her, and also tell her not to talk about werewolves like that. Which is pretty rich of her anyway, considering one of the professors on her panel is a hellhound.”

“Hellhounds are not werewolves,” Ragnar says, blinking.

Athelstan flushes and knocks into the table as he gets up. “Oh—no, I know, sorry, I wasn’t trying to really equivocate the two, I just—well, that was probably insensitive of me too—”

“It was not,” Lagertha says, reaching out to him. She steadies him, and then takes the hard drive. Then pushes him back as he tries to take it back. “And I think perhaps I should take this to her.”

“I—but she was so rude to you!” Athelstan says. “I wouldn’t want to put you through that again.”

Lagertha pauses, then smiles at him. “It is fine. I have met worse. And besides, I do not think you are the right person to speak with her right now.”

“No, he is not,” Ragnar says, looking at something out the window and grinning. “That could solve it.”

Athelstan starts to turn to see what he’s looking at, but Lagertha gets in the way. Then he remembers, and takes a step after her, but at the same time he does, Ragnar pushes out of his seat and blocks him. Pointedly, with an arm slung over Athelstan’s shoulders to make that clear.

“I think this is not your business now,” he says, twisting them to face the window.

“Oh,” Athelstan says, blinking rapidly. “But…I thought Rollo’s your brother?”

“Yes, and even when he is making trouble, he is my brother,” Ragnar says, a faint, distinctly entertained rumbling undertone to his voice, as they watch Rollo and Gisla through the window. “But he is also an alpha, and a man, and I think he can choose his trouble. You said she was staying in Norway anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad you realize that he’s the one in danger,” Athelstan says. Not accusing, just…a bit impressed, honestly, that Ragnar has picked up on all of that, despite Gisla’s unpleasant behavior.

Ragnar switches to grinning at him. Then, as easily as picking up something, the man presses a kiss to Athelstan’s temple. His arm slips down Athelstan’s back and then curls around Athelstan’s waist as he drags them both back into the chair Athelstan’s just vacated.

“Let’s go over the customs paperwork,” Ragnar suggests, as if the six-foot-plus muscled warm stretch of him isn’t pressed up against Athelstan, and Athelstan doesn’t even really care that most of it is still dirty from the digging. “I do not want any trouble for you from the university over this. What was it about my axes?”

“Really, you want to go over the paperwork?” Athelstan can’t help muttering, even as his body inevitably slumps back. He shifts and Ragnar’s breath hitches; Athelstan almost apologizes for it, and then a darker impulse catches him. He does shift back, so that his weight isn’t pressing right on the hard curve of the cock cage Ragnar is wearing, but he doesn’t _jump_ back. “You’re making this very hard on yourself.”

An amused huff dances over his left ear. “I am an alpha, and a man. I can make these decisions,” Ragnar says. He nuzzles into Athelstan’s neck, beard pleasantly scratchy, and then intercepts Athelstan’s computer as it starts to slide to the floor. “And the axes are important. I do not want them to be interfered with.”

Athelstan bites his lip, too distracted by the tightening of his own jeans to really be embarrassed over the laptop-catch. “You make it sound like you’re planning on using them over there.”

He’s just joking, or really, letting his mouth run on while his brain attempts to resolve competing impulses, but for the briefest second, Ragnar hesitates. And then Lagertha comes back inside, muttering to herself in Norwegian and wiping blood off one hand, and Athelstan half-forgets about it in the rush to first, see whether she’s all right, and second, confirm no one’s freshly died out there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are at this point tons of fiction focusing on Miskatonic and what it might be like to be a student or professor there ( _Welcome to Miskatonic University_ , ed. by Scott Gable and C. Dombrowski, is a good anthology), but I haven't found much on cross-university interactions. Anyone who's had any exposure to graduate school knows that's a major part of the experience.
> 
> Asenath Waite is from _The Thing on the Doorstep_ , where an evil old male magician apparently has a daughter for the sole purpose of stealing her body to use it to seduce a guy he then marries in order to get hold of his resources. Asenath's the daughter, and no, Lovecraft really did not unpack all of the issues that kind of scenario raises but it's led to some very thoughtful modern fiction.
> 
> For those of you who don't watch _Vikings_ , the Lothbroks are similar to the Hales in that everyone wants to go after them, and Rollo spends most of the show being the undependable backstabbing sidekick to Ragnar (not like Peter in the sense that Rollo's plotting generally involves him showing up to personally fight Ragnar, rather than going through pawns).


	3. Chapter 3

Thankfully, Gisla and Rollo are both still in respective whole, able, living and mentally stable pieces. They are also going back to town to continue whatever “discussion” they’d been having that had resulted in Lagertha having to separate the two of them. The blood had been Rollo’s; Gisla had looked fine as far as Athelstan could tell, aside from the constant disgusted twist to her mouth, and when he’d dared to ask whether giving Rollo a lift was a good idea, she’d tried to glare him into Azathoth’s whirling center.

“Not really, you can’t invoke a Great Old One just by looking,” Athelstan hastily explains as Lagertha starts to look murderous again. Since the other two had left, they’ve showered, eaten dinner, and gotten three-quarters of the way through the customs paperwork and she’s only just stopped wondering aloud whether telling the Patrol about Rollo would be worth Gunnhild’s irritation. “Even the incident in the Cabot Museum didn’t involve physical transportation, only psychic at most and even then it’s still disputed whether—anyway, I’m rambling again. What I’m trying to say is, I don’t think you need to worry about Gisla. She’s got all the paperwork and I strongly suspect she doesn’t want to have anything more to do with me. Or you.”

Lagertha still looks sour, but settles down next to Athelstan on the bed. “I do not think you need to have anything more to do with _her_.”

Honestly, Athelstan had been thinking the same thing, but that’s one thing, whereas enthusiastically agreeing out loud—which had been his first impulse—is another. Brichester’s even more selective about its graduate admissions than its undergrad, and the high attrition rate on top of that means that at this point, Athelstan’s probably going to be colleagues with Gisla for years to come. 

“But Rollo,” he starts, in an attempt to change the subject. “You really don’t think he needs—er, back-up?”

Ragnar lets out a grunt that’s mostly muffled in the bedding haphazardly piled around and over him. Given how rangy he is, it’s interesting—Athelstan occasionally has to fight back the urge to call it ‘charming’—how, no matter the size of the bed, he always seems to end up curled into an impossible knot of pillows, naked patches of skin, and at least one of Athelstan’s limbs.

“He’s fine,” Ragnar says, head emerging from a fold of blanket to nearly run into the front edge of Athelstan’s laptop. The corners of his lips tilt up as Athelstan obligingly moves that, and then he pillows his head more comfortably on Athelstan’s thigh. At the same time, the cushioning behind Athelstan gets forcibly plumped so that Athelstan has no choice but to let Ragnar’s head slide towards his groin. “And if he is not, he has pack. He has ‘allies.’ He does not need anything from us now, or so he has told me.”

“Bjorn will help him, if that is needed,” Lagertha says. She doesn’t sound particularly thrilled about it, but she also doesn’t sound as ready to leap up and incite violence as she had with Gisla. “Anyway, if she hurts him, this would violate the University Code, would it not? Then your mentor would step in.”

“Well…maybe. It’s probably more of an issue right now that he hasn’t signed onto any of the nondisclosure clauses, so she can’t really tell him much,” Athelstan says. “That might limit their contacts anyway.”

Ragnar reaches under the blankets and pats Athelstan’s knee, in what Athelstan realizes a second later is intended to be reassurance. “I do not think they will be talking much to each other,” he says. His hand stops moving, but doesn’t drop off Athelstan’s knee. “These are the same ones we signed yesterday?”

“The confidentiality clauses? Well, not exactly, you’re actually enrolling, so the ones you signed are more extensive,” Athelstan says, and then winces. “Also the exceptions are more detailed, and we got in all the were-specific language your lawyer recommended and nearly all of the extra covenants I’ve got in mine—”

“I am sure ours are fine.” Lagertha rests her chin on Athelstan’s shoulder. “Floki looked at it, and so did you.”

“I appreciate the confidence in me,” Athelstan says after a long pause. Not that he doesn’t mean it, because he certainly does, but at the same time…well, they do have a lawyer, he reminds himself. And said lawyer _also_ did not seem very impressed by Brichester’s legalese, and was very pointed about telling Athelstan so, even after both Ragnar and Lagertha had explained that this wasn’t _Athelstan’s_ drafting that Floki was reviewing. “Well, all right. He is probably fine, Gisla isn’t really one for unnecessary violence, even if she can come off a bit strong.”

Lagertha makes a soft, disbelieving noise, but when Athelstan starts to turn his head, her cheek presses in and she reaches over the keyboard, making him look at the screen instead. “I think we should discuss what is coming in America, not what is happening in a country we are leaving. Is there anything else we need to answer?”

“Oh, no, I think we’ve filled out all the questionnaires,” Athelstan says, clicking ‘save and close.’ Then he frowns when the window doesn’t disappear—no, it did, but there’s another form right behind it. He minimizes it to check his email, then grimaces and re-opens the window. “Sorry, my mistake. One more—oh, this isn’t customs, this is pre-existing conditions screening.”

“We’re werewolves,” Ragnar says, sounding faintly puzzled. “We heal those?”

“Not health, social conditions,” Athelstan says, half-reading through the form. He’d last filled out one of those right before coming to Norway, but he’d gotten a nonstandard one because of Averoigne and…this also looks nonstandard. He frowns and scrolls back up a few lines and rereads. “Any existing connections or contacts that you might have which could cause issues. It’s going to sound a bit like it’s asking for your family tree, which—well, honestly, it is asking for that, because unfortunately Cthulhic-area studies tend to have intergenerational…”

He rereads the form. Then clicks back to his email. This one had been attached to what had _looked_ like something from Brichester, with a fairly lengthy subject line that means most of it isn’t visible in the preview. When he clicks in, it becomes clear that the email is actually from Miskatonic, with a very simple heading that had become obscured after Brichester’s irritating auto-forwarding system had tacked on an external-email warning. The _actual_ original heading is: _Local Werewolf Pack Guidelines_.

“Go back to the form,” Ragnar says. 

Athelstan starts, then begins to stammer an apology. Ragnar hadn’t seemed that disturbed by the start, but at the apology the other man frowns and lifts his head. At the same time Lagertha shifts and Athelstan gets the strong impression the two are communicating, since immediately afterward, Ragnar resettles his head in Athelstan’s lap while Lagertha simultaneously drapes herself over Athelstan’s shoulder.

“This should be interesting,” Lagertha says. “It has been a while since we met packs not from Norway.”

“Is that going to be difficult?” Athelstan blurts out. Then cringes. “That is, I don’t mean to—”

“We do not fight _every_ werewolf we meet. Nor do we wish to fight more than we must,” Lagertha says in a very unruffled tone. “This form, it wishes to know if we have a vendetta or history like that?”

Athelstan swallows against his burning face. “…yes. Vendettas, or family ties, or…well, there are twenty-three potential types of relevant interactions. Honestly, with the time difference, no one’s going to read this till morning so if you want to call Floki first, you have time. Or I can try to get you an extension.”

Ragnar tilts his head up enough for Athelstan to see his frown. “Why would we call Floki?”

“I thought he was your lawyer?” Athelstan tries.

“He is that.” For another second Ragnar stares up at Athelstan, and it almost looks as if he’s wary of something. But then he grins, and twists his head back to face the laptop. “But we do not tell him every werewolf we meet. He would not be as helpful with this as we would be. So show us the form and we will answer the questions.”

Athelstan opens his mouth to…well, he’s not entirely sure. He doesn’t really want to disagree with them; cooperation is going to be the quickest way through all the paperwork, and without that done, they can’t come with him. Well, they could, but he’d have to try and leave them well outside of any Miskatonic facility and somehow he doubts they’d go along with that. 

There’s just something…additional about the way they’re acting. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but there’s more to it than just them wanting to be helpful. On the other hand, he can’t really demand that they _not_ help, and…and possibly he’s reading too much into it. Or simply misreading them completely. They haven’t known each other that long, and he’s barely even started learning where all his prior references on werewolves went wrong, let alone being capable of claiming any expertise in these two.

“Well, all right, it does need to be done,” he says, scrolling all the way to the top of the form. “I’ll see if I can get a briefing on the resident pack for you once it’s in. They usually do send something like that on any local authorities you’ll be interacting with, like the one for the Elder Patrol I showed you. You’ll want to look at that, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Ragnar and Lagertha say.

A little forcefully, Athelstan thinks, but then Lagertha attempts to parse out the first question on the form and he has to explain why someone would ask about prior snake killings. Ragnar’s immediately fascinated by Yig, and in the ensuing discussion, Athelstan lets the moment of unease go. He doesn’t quite forget about it, but it just doesn’t seem like the time, and anyway, it’s a long flight. Perhaps they can just sort it out on the way over.

* * *

After Stiles and Scott get up all of the yarnwork, they retreat to one of the monitoring stations to watch the data roll in and to feed Quint, who apparently has a minimum daily intake requirement of half a pound of nuts. “It also stops him from trying to eat the acorns,” Scott says, carefully scattering a couple more pecans in front of Quint. “We explained that we’re pretty sure the tree doesn’t want him doing that with them, and I think he gets it, but sometimes he just gets hungry.”

“Well, he wants some peanuts to top him off, he knows where to come,” Erica says from just beyond the doorway, where she and Boyd are still loitering around. “Just a couple quick reference shots for the tail, so we can figure out if that Quintmas tree is doable or not.”

Scott and Quint are both giving Erica their facial reactions and judging from her snickering, those are not worth missing. And yet Stiles isn’t looking up, because more information is rolling into his inbox. “Oh, seriously, I thought that was a typo—nope, actual mated alphas. Damn, did Dad—okay, wait, he _did_ text me, I just missed it with the nut break…”

“Um, Stiles?” Scott says, very politely, even though when Stiles looks up, Scott is clearly expending all his energy and then some on gripping a very reluctant-looking Erica and Boyd by the shoulders. “What, exactly, do you mean, mated alphas? As in some are coming?”

“Yeah, and Dad says he’s over with Laura discussing right now and he also forwarded the forms to your mom,” Stiles says, eyeing them. The air’s suddenly full of tension and yeah, okay, he knows he shouldn’t have just read that out loud like that. But also, if any of them have forgotten that they’re standing in the middle of an official Miskatonic research site and the last thing they should do is sudden unexpected movement, he just really doesn’t know what other how-to-not-die videos Derek can shoot. “They’re Athelstan’s assistants, apparently. Look, I just got this, it wasn’t like we were keeping this from you.”

“Assistants?” Erica says. “But I thought this guy was like you.”

Scott actually has to relax himself in order to make a face at her, he’s that tense. “Stiles has assistants.”

“He’s got a _film_ crew who he’s dating, I don’t think that that’s the same thing,” Erica says. She uses the opportunity to twist out from Scott’s grip, but then puts her hands up as she slides past him to flop onto the nearest stool. “Okay, I’m interested now, let’s see these alpha bodyguards.”

“It doesn’t say they’re bodyguards, it says research adjuncts,” Stiles says, nettled. “Look, I know they’re werewolves and there’s a track record here of pack fights, but also, they filled out visitation forms and submitted a customs inventory and everything. I don’t think they’re trying to sneak in under the radar.”

“Customs inventory?” Scott says, and then he looks a little embarrassed about himself.

He starts to change the subject, but Boyd steps into the room. “Is this a list of all the cosmic alien body parts they’ve got? Allison told us all about these Miskatonic inventories.”

“That’s not what she said, and that’s probably not what Stiles meant,” Scott says irritably. And when Boyd shoots him a look, he doesn’t even try to cover it up. He just keeps looking annoyed. “If this is just so you can get everyone upset—Stiles doesn’t _have_ to tell you. You’re not signed up to the Miskatonic info-sharing pact, Laura is.”

“One, you’re not in our pack, as you’ve said a ton, and two, you’re not _anyone’s_ alpha, as you’ve said an additional ton, and three, way to speak for people who can speak for themselves, as you’ve told us _another_ ton that that’s not cool,” Erica says. She slouches a little lower in her chair, raising her eyebrows as Scott opens his mouth, closes it, and then slowly grimaces. Then, grinning, she turns to Stiles. “Well, now that that’s out of the way, how about you lay some knowledge on us, Stilinski?”

“How about I don’t,” Stiles says, getting up and taking Scott by the arm. He moves them over to the side (Quint seizes a pecan per tentacle and hops into Scott’s hoodie hood) while tapping some of the floor sigils with his toe, then strolls out the door once the station’s finished ejecting the Tedious Twosome. “Because speaking for myself…none of your business, and take it up with your alpha if you disagree. She knows where to find me. You know, when she’s not getting the download you’re not entitled to just because none of you can keep up with Scott here.”

* * *

“That said, I can totally have Dad lay some extra nondisclosure clauses on Laura if that helps run interference,” Stiles says to Scott as they regroup at the diner on the outskirts of the preserve. “It’s not even special treatment. We do this all the time if we think there’s an escalation issue.”

Scott gives Stiles a weary smile. “Thanks, but I’m pretty sure they’ve already gotten to her. Anyway, you probably want to just focus on Derek and Peter. I can handle the rest of them.”

Stiles twitches a little, then resists the urge to reach for his phone and instead keeps looking at Scott. “Is this really a big deal? I mean, does it need to be? I _mean_ …look, trying really hard not to trivialize how very much I still don’t know the ins and outs of werewolf culture and all, but literally, I know what weapons they’re bringing.”

Scott sits up straight and opens his mouth.

Grimacing, Stiles slouches back into the booth. “I—” he takes a breath “—okay, I’m kind of not getting it, am I?”

“I don’t think it’s about whether there’s something for you to ‘get,’” Scott says slowly. He fidgets a little, like he does whenever he’s not sure this is when he should speak up, and then he sighs and looks Stiles in the eye. “I’m not Derek or Peter, so you really need to ask them how they feel about it. I can just talk about me and mom, and—”

“You ran into mated alphas before and they killed people and the people they didn’t kill are still carrying around trauma,” Stiles guesses. Not because he’s a wiseass, just because, even if he wasn’t around for it, he’s heard enough stories to see the patterns unique to Beacon Hills. 

Scott doesn’t exactly deny it, but oddly, he’s frowning. He rubs absently at the side of his head. “Um…yeah, that did happen that one time, but I wasn’t really thinking of—although maybe that’s why Erica and Boyd were, I should’ve remembered, they really went through the wringer on that one…but actually, it’s just more we’re kind of bad at talking to other werewolves who aren’t omegas.”

“Huh. Not where I thought you were going with that,” Stiles says after a moment.

“Well, I only just talked to Mom and Chris about this the other day,” Scott says, sounding faintly self-conscious. “Allison goes to the main campus once a month, and I go with her, and so I’ve been filling in all the visitation forms for that and…it’s just Miskatonic’s really thought about how to have people from multiple packs together and it doesn’t turn into problems and I realized we don’t do that at all.”

“But that’s because a lot of werewolves come over and try to kill you,” Stiles has to point out. 

For a second, Scott looks like he wants to soften that statement. Then he realizes that would be dishonest of him, and like he’s not sure whether that or acknowledging that actually, most of the werewolves he knows are murderous assholes hurts him more, and _then_ he sighs. “Okay, true, but we can’t just…there’s got to be another way to meet werewolves,” he finishes, a little limply. Then he bucks himself up. “I mean, yeah, to be honest, I…I do want to see this weapons inventory, but also—the last time Allison went in for her on-campus weekend, we went to this really cool field studies presentation and a werewolf was doing it—an alpha, even, and we even talked a little after and nothing happened and it was…it was nice.”

“Are you sure Allison wasn’t threatening them behind your back?” Stiles asks, mostly joking. Mostly, because Allison does not want to live up to the existing Argent reputation, but that doesn’t mean she won’t intimidate any werewolves not named Scott. 

Scott looks like he hadn’t even considered that, because Scott, and then he slowly shakes his head. “No, she—the alpha, I mean, she said up front she’d heard about the Argent who’d enrolled and guessed it had to be Allison, and things got a little tense but then she started talking about the program, because she TA’ed for a core class one semester, and…it was fine. I think Allison was fine with it. She didn’t say anything afterward.”

“Oh, look, I didn’t mean to make it sound like she was going around you or anything. I’m sure she’s not,” Stiles says, while surreptitiously taking his phone out and making a note to just check on this former TA. There aren’t too many werewolves who come back to Miskatonic for graduate work so he’s almost positive he knows who it is, and…look, he’s pretty sure Allison knows better than to take out a staff member, but it doesn’t hurt to check. Or to look up said werewolf’s psych screening records, since werewolves actually are below-average on the cosmically-induced madness rate, but it happens. “But okay, right, so potentially there’s a way in which this all plays out not like a pack invasion, but just like a bunch of visiting academics are just visiting academics.”

“I think that’d be nice. I’d like to try and look at it that way,” Scott says earnestly. He pauses, something struggling a little in his expression, and then his expression falls a little. Not much, but noticeably. “But to be honest, Derek and Peter might not look at it that way. I don’t want to make assumptions, because—you go back to campus too, don’t you? So they probably—”

Stiles grimaces. “Um, yeah, but Derek refuses to cross the town boundary line—he was iffy on the town before, thanks to my old rental, and the last time he came with me to the registrar’s office—anyway, they kept that as part of the training videos _despite_ my official complaint to HR. And Peter is _very_ focused on the library. And you have to schedule time for the parts he wants to see, so you don’t really accidentally run into people.”

Actually, to be honest, for a while now Stiles has had a sneaking suspicion that Peter deliberately sets things up to avoid having to interact with anyone but Stiles, Stiles’ dad, and the occasional carefully-selected faculty member. He hasn’t really asked about it, because much as Peter loves adulation, even he’s a little weirded out by his fan-following among the Miskatonic student body (and Stiles’ dad’s team now has a new favorite assignment to break in newbies on). So if Peter wants to pretend like the obsessive comments are really amusing while he leverages the isolationist elements of Miskatonic’s security clearance protocols, Stiles…doesn’t mind not having to rescue his boyfriend from self-centered psychos with access to dark magic, irony noted and ignored.

“Well, they don’t really live _here_ anymore, they live with you, and Athelstan’s not going to go to your place,” Scott says, trying really hard, as he always does when presented with an opportunity to reassure.

Going with it is tempting. Stiles certifies every year that he meets a certain level of risk-assessment, okay, but Scott is very good at that type of earnest encouragement and…Stiles grimaces and pulls his phone out. He fiddles with it, then hands it over to Scott.

“So this is the weapons inventory,” he says, as Scott starts scrolling through it. “I guess my one consolation is that the voluntarily-declared part is a perfect match for the customs check, but on the other hand, that could just signal a whole new level of mindgaming. Or shielding, or both, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“This is a lot of…axes,” Scott says after a moment. He purses his lips. “Um. So…someone told them the Nemeton is a tree, right?”

Stiles snickers before he can help himself. “Yeah, they got sent a massive briefing, and Athelstan’s studying xenobotany.”

“Well—it’s hard to miss an ax, at least?” Scott says, still trying to find the silver lining. “And they…they aren’t bringing anything else? The entire section on cursed objects is empty…so is the section on potentially animate inanimate objects, and cult idols, and…really? Just axes?”

“I think there are daggers too,” Stiles points out. “Also, that’s just the paperwork for the two alphas. Athelstan’s paperwork has—okay, to be fair, he’s bringing exactly the type of stuff you’d think someone who studies sentient phases in botanical entities would bring, after you factor in Averoigne, and—”

“Are you still worried about him?” Scott suddenly asks.

Stiles blinks. “What?”

“Athelstan,” Scott says. He waits a moment, then puts Stiles’ phone down on the diner table and pushes it back towards Stiles. “You know, that he’ll get offended or feel threatened, like that other guy.”

“West almost violated one and a half treaties on the proper treatment of nonhuman but still very deserving of basic rights entities,” Stiles says, as Quint suddenly pops up onto Scott’s shoulder and looks very interested in the discussion. “I wasn’t worried about _him_ , I just felt bad that my dad was gonna have to manage disposal of that grade of shithole.”

Quint nods in agreement, which Scott doesn’t see as he keeps looking at Stiles. He doesn’t really look skeptical, but he does look as if maybe Stiles’ words and Stiles’ facial expressions aren’t matching up and maybe he doesn’t think it has anything to do with a potential possession, or evidence of Elder One intervention in Stiles’ genetic history, or anything that isn’t one hundred percent pure human motivations.

“I think if you tell Derek and Peter it’s important to you that they don’t pick a fight with Athelstan’s assistants, it’ll be fine,” Scott says. “They care about you. They’ll listen to you.”

“Well, I know, and that’s not to say I don’t believe they care,” Stiles says. “I mean, they care. They care all the way into your mom’s bad books because they don’t want me to be mad they inconvenienced my dad with their accidental body dis—”

“Stiles.” Scott leans forward and grabs Stiles’ forearm, and stares into Stiles’ face until his sheer _belief_ makes Stiles stop talking. “Stiles. _Listen_. It’s gonna be fine. It really is. Okay? Just explain it to them, and let them know what you’d like them to do, and it’ll be okay. I’m sure of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Athelstan is referencing Lovecraft and Heald's _Out of the Aeons_ story when he mentions the Cabot Museum.
> 
> Floki isn't a werewolf. There'll be more details on him later.
> 
> Yig is from Lovecraft and Bishop's _The Curse of Yig_ , and is a Great Old One that functions rather more like a traditional god than most of them (in that it has easily-relatable motivations, like if you kill the rattlesnakes that it considers its "children," it'll curse you).
> 
> So, Kali and Ennis still happened here, but since Peter and Laura were both alive and cooperating with Derek, they tracked Erica and Boyd down a lot faster and got them safely out. Also Melissa was Not Happy about torturing teenagers for the sake of revenge on dead Talia.


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m pretty sure nobody should have these many medieval torture tools,” Derek says, frowning at the laptop. “Even Gerard kept it to just a back-up sword.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Derek. It’s just an ax,” Peter scolds, with a careful eye on Stiles. But then he reaches over and taps at the keyboard, and when the screen reloads, his face twitches. He tries to cover it up with an eyebrow-raise, but at this point Stiles thinks he has a pretty good working knowledge of Peter-body-language (if not werewolves generally), and that was definitely a moment of shock. “Granted, it _is_ accurate to the fifteenth century.”

“Isn’t that after medieval times?” Derek mutters, still frowning at the screen.

Peter glances at him, startled and now trying to hide a moment of being impressed, but before that can play out, Stiles’ nerves get the better of him and he can’t help blurting out, “So do you know them?”

Both Peter and Derek look up at him. Peter’s expression does one of those complex evolutions where his lifetime of being the only person in his family whose ability to lie has a direct rather than inverse relation to his sense of self-preservation (even if that’s not the only thing Peter’s lying has a relationship with) is warring with his understanding that Stiles is actually not out to get him. He presses his lips together, then opens his mouth.

Derek, on the other hand, just jumps straight to grumpy. “They’re Norwegian, since when do we know anybody from Norway?”

“Um, I didn’t mean—I mean I don’t know,” Stiles says, a little rattled, a little annoyed. “Look, I’m not assuming you _do_ know them, just because you’re both werewolves, but also I know we’ve still got at least thirty-two hours of video to get through just to bring me up to date on Beacon Hills High Year Two, so—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Derek says. Then winces, and doesn’t look at the glare Peter is currently directing at him. “Meant to say…look, no. No, we don’t. That I can remember, anyway. Laura said she’d look through what’s left of the family photos, just to check.”

“No, I’m very sure we’ve never crossed paths with the Lothbrok pack,” Peter says, still trying to re-cut Derek’s sideburns with his eyes. Then he takes a breath and resets his expression to ‘people I like’ and looks at Stiles. “Werewolves do travel, of course, but it’s still rare for an alpha to cross an ocean, and if one did, I would fully expect them to bring several pack-members with them. If _two_ of them did, I would expect the gossip to still be making the rounds.”

Stiles would like to relax, but even before he started dating these two, Miskatonic had trained him out of skipping over vetting questions. “Okay, good, so we don’t know them, which means there aren’t any pre-existing vendettas. So I guess next question, they did provide answers to the conflicts questionnaire and those are actually pretty detailed, have you gotten to that yet?”

“They have twenty different types of axes,” Derek says.

“That’s not answering the actual question,” Peter says, and then he gets so annoyed he pushes out from besides Derek and crawls across the bed to Stiles. When Stiles starts to move and then catches himself, Peter pauses. Considers things, not looking offended—which just moves Stiles’ guilt from budding flush to full-on fire-face—and then continues crawling, except just with his arms so that he ends up stretched out with his chin just hovering above Stiles’ knee. “Yes, I did take a look at it.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. He can tell Peter’s falling back on werewolf signals, but he’s not sure if the lowered head is supposed to be just nonthreatening (proper response: mirror the action) or also is gesturing towards apology (proper response: unpack what backstory might be relevant). For a second he thinks about his visual dictionary of werewolf postures on his phone, and then he gets hold of himself and focuses on field observation. “And it was…interesting?”

Slightly nervous humor is apparently a good move, because Peter’s smile is more on the genuinely affectionate rather than smooth-charm side of amused. He reprops himself up on his elbow, then shifts over a few inches as Stiles cautiously switches to slouching back, thus pushing his leg down so Peter’s chin is now over his thigh.

“It was unusually forthcoming,” Peter says. He takes the invitation, although in typically Peter fashion, his hand sneaks up under Stiles’ shirt to cuddle the bare skin of Stiles’ waist, and then, while Stiles is stifling a yelp, he ends up pillowing his head on Stiles’ hip. “Also, as far as I can verify, accurate. It appears the pair of them really have survived nine separate vendetta cycles over three decades”

Behind him, Derek’s head shoots up. Peter’s expression doesn’t change but the tension, which had been draining, is back, and strong enough that Derek keeps his mouth shut.

“This translates into actually able to use all those weapons, I’m guessing?” Stiles says.

Peter nods. He seems about to say more, but then holds off for some reason, just eyeing Stiles as if waiting for something. What, Stiles can’t figure out, but the tightness in the air is…going to trigger his need to say something smartass-y and probably not helpful, so he needs to do something.

He puts his hand out without thinking and Peter goes still. Then relaxes, his eyelids lowering a little, as Stiles runs his fingers into Peter’s hair near the temple. “But then, I suppose if you’re going to hire someone to guard an academic with Athelstan’s credentials, that is the least you’d be looking for,” he says. He turns his head into the petting, then abruptly pushes himself up before resettling his head on Stiles’ belly. “I’m still trying to figure out why they explained the twenty-year gap in activity. That’s the part that worries me.”

Stiles did actually read everything before tracking Derek and Peter down, but it was _really_ detailed and his speed-reading was focused on potential for violence, which…this seems not related to. “But they did say why, and I checked it out and it does all fall in line with the reports I can find. I mean, okay, maybe you’d cast doubt on the Brichester one but the Elder Patrol over in Norway not only doesn’t have any reason to coordinate conspiracies with Brichester, they actually have a pending complaint against the dean there and I really need to get hold of the unredacted version because the bits I can get are hila—”

“Well, that’s the point, they’re being honest about the fact that they fell for a trap, were imprisoned by a renegade mage they couldn’t beat themselves, and only got free because of a series of fortunate coincidences,” Peter says. He’s absently nuzzling into Stiles’ shirt now, with his brow furrowed, as his brain visibly does the same, except less affectionate and more frustrated, against this conundrum. “Why would you admit that? And on record, no less?”

“Maybe they’re trying to make themselves seem less threatening,” Derek says, although he also sounds as if his brain is having trouble not rejecting this.

“But by telling us that, it makes it seem as if they don’t care what we think, which is pure alpha aggression,” Peter says. “That can’t possibly be it if they’re trying to signal peaceful intentions.”

“They could just be more scared of violating the section at the end that requires them to represent and warrant this is a full disclosure,” Stiles suggests. “It does say any claims get brought in Carcosa in case of any dispute.”

“That’d mean they have to be more worried about crazy cultists from another dimension than their rep with us,” Derek says skeptically. “They’re werewolves. _Alpha_ werewolves. So I don’t think so.”

Stiles bites back a sigh. “Well, maybe since they’re from Norway, because I was just plowing through a really interesting global study in ghoul appearances in werewolf mythology—”

Derek makes a face. “Ghouls don’t really worry how they come off to us. I don’t think geography has anything to do with how much werewolves want to impress each other.”

Kind of harsh, Stiles wants to say, but that’d be really patronizing of him. He leans back on his elbow, trying to find something else to say, because also, he doesn’t want Derek to drop into one of those depressive moods of his (versus just the usual irritation) right when they’re going to have high-profile visitors.

Well, no, that’s wrong, he thinks with a wince. It’s not just all about the chance to meet the rare Cthulhic expert with both intact sanity _and_ rumored decent social skills. He’s normally pretty proud of maintaining his own ability to navigate humanity without wishing it into Nyarlathotep’s grip every five seconds, and his dad’s right, he needs to get a grip. This isn’t that big of a deal.

“Hey, if it’d be…um, less of a problem, Athelstan’s technically coming to see Dad, not me,” he finally says. He feels Peter shift but looks away before he can meet the other man’s eyes. Ends up looking at Derek instead, who has an oddly puzzled expression on. “I mean, I do really want to hear what he has to say, because aside from personal interest, it could impact my research, but I don’t—I’m not running the welcome committee or anything. So, um, I could—we could leave. I can always leave Dad a list of questions.”

Peter starts to exclaim something, pushing himself up, but he and Stiles have both forgotten Stiles’ fingers in his hair. He has to stop so Stiles doesn’t poke his eye—sure, whatever, everything heals and so eye jelly is _still_ gross and still not being a good boyfriend—and so it’s actually Derek who gets in the next word.

“We’re not going to start anything,” he says. He puts the laptop aside and pushes off the headboard. Pauses with his torso positioned to move off the bed, and then abruptly changes so that he’s sliding up on Stiles’ other side. He looks tense about it, so Stiles holds still and just lets Derek figure out how he wants to maneuver around Stiles’ arm, or if he does—he does, very carefully, looking down as if this requires nearly all of his attention. “Your dad already talked to Laura, and anyway I think she was looking for an excuse to not have to go into the preserve till Melissa’s done with the sheriff’s latest tantrum. She’s fine with Miskatonic doing all the patrols. If these people are a big deal, I can just go stay with her till they’re gone.”

“You’ll have to kick Cora out of your room,” Peter says after a long, thoughtful moment. He’s dropped back to drape over Stiles, but one of his hands has ended up dangling over Stiles’ hip to just rest its knuckles against Derek. 

Derek rolls his eyes. “Like I haven’t done that before. Anyway, as long as they’re not trying to settle in, I don’t really care who they are, and you know I…don’t really follow all the research stuff anyway. I know you’re gonna go, but if Stiles’ dad is there, they’ll be lucky if they just get tased if they start—”

“I’m still thinking about it,” Peter says, and then glances up as Stiles lets out a surprised noise. “Well, yes, it _would_ be interesting, Stiles. But if I made all my decisions just on the basis of what would be interesting, I’d never have survived high school. And I’m mostly interested in knowledge these days, not in useless displays of arrogance.”

“So me being around other werewolves wouldn’t be a big deal?” Stiles can’t help asking. Then he presses his lips together. “I mean, seriously, not trying to just sound like a relationship troll, because—also, not trying to sound like I’d just, I don’t know, randomly ask to rub their hand all over my neck or something—”

Both Peter and Derek go very, very still. Their eyes don’t go glowy, but Stiles doesn’t need that to read the sudden frisson in the air. And then Derek, surprisingly, gives his shoulders a casual roll back, his lips peeling from his teeth into a grin that is sincerely amused, if on the ferocious side of it. “Peter’s probably going to say if they need to get that close to smell us, we messed up.”

“Am I going to say that, now?” Peter says, tone deceptively mild, as he slightly repositions his lounging, a definite intent to its line. His fingers splay out as Derek inches forward, letting Derek’s movement drag them over the curve of Derek’s ass. Then they snap around Derek’s thigh, stopping him just as he’s gotten up to Stiles’ shoulder. “And I suppose you’re going to decline to do anything about it?”

“No,” Derek says, more than a little offended. He glances at Peter, then at Stiles. Some of the slow, prickly energy of the moment seeps out as he sobers. “I don’t live in this town now, it’s Laura’s and Scott’s problem. So it’s really just a problem if it’s about you, not about the tree or whatever it’s doing with those acorns.”

“Well, much appreciated, and also, appreciated that we’re not just jumping straight to the possessive scent-marking behavior but having a good, healthy innuendo session around it,” Stiles says. He reaches up and pauses to let Derek react, and when the man doesn’t, he curls his hand across the back of Derek’s neck. “Which is to say…yeah, look, I’d really like this to go without any fights, but if they start something, you _know_ whose side I’m testifying on during the post-mortem. Right?”

For a long second, Derek’s non-expression expression raises a bunch of possibilities Stiles really, really works hard to resign to the swirling maw of Azathoth, which allegedly outdoes black holes but which still doesn’t permanently eliminate human insecurity. 

Then Derek’s brow tics up. “So we’re not having sex right now?”

Stiles…makes an inarticulate, stuttering noise of disbelief (which he honestly thinks Derek has a thing for, at this point). Then gets rolled into Derek’s pecs, because Peter, equally disbelieving but more action-oriented about it, shoves him over as part of yanking at Derek’s jeans, because when you have no words, why not just get naked? 

Not that Stiles is objecting, especially once he gets over Derek’s trolling moment and gets his hands under the man’s shirt. And yeah, sure, he recognizes that they still have tons of details to thrash out here, like if Derek really is going to try and survive his sisters and is Peter really going to turn down a chance at firsthand experience with highly-restricted magic. But the important thing, which he’s now gotten to know them both well enough to recognize on sight, is that they’re gonna talk to him about it. So okay, let’s celebrate that first.

Besides, honestly, those are a ton of axes. They can’t actually need _all_ of them.

* * *

“I think we should have Floki ship us more,” Ragnar says, mopping at the gore on his face. “I do not think those are going to hold an edge now, and it will take too long to reforge them.”

“I think it would be faster to just buy some here at a store,” Lagertha says, not nearly so gore-soaked, but looking considerably grimmer than Ragnar.

“We’re going to have to review your entry paperwork,” the U.S. Customs officer says, impressively deadpan, as people in hazmat suits gingerly start to move towards the bloody mess by the luggage carts.

“Wait,” Miskatonic’s rep says, holding her phone up. She taps it a few times, studies the colored flashes, and then puts it down. “It’s all earthly, nothing of that’s ours.”

The people in the yellow suits stop, while the people in white suits standing just behind them all twitch. 

The Customs officer stares at her. “Are you kidding me? Your people just disemboweled a Sasquatch in _my_ baggage area and you’re not even going to clean it up?”

Ragnar gets that half-sheepish, half-amused look on his face. “We call it a berserker.”

“Ah,” Athelstan starts, about to suggest that perhaps now is not the time for a cultural lesson.

But before he can, the Miskatonic rep pivots sharply around to glower at him. He swallows hard, but he’s well aware of Ragnar and Lagertha slipping up behind him so he can hardly duck away, at least not without increasing the chances of further bloodshed.

Miskatonic’s rep presses her lips together, then turns halfway back and signals to the people in the yellow suits to move towards the gore. “Fine, we’re here anyway, but it’s not even Code Octopus and if someone from State shows up, we’re not going to buy them coffee before we ship them back,” she tells the Customs officer. Then she gestures to Athelstan to come with her towards a more secluded part of the baggage claim. “And you, what the hell? Didn’t you file a conflicts form?”

“Yes!” Athelstan hisses, and then grimaces. “Yes. Yes, I did, for all three of us, and it was properly sworn and attested to, and I got a confirmation that it’d been routed all the way up to—”

“This is my fault,” says the tall, blond, surprisingly boyish-looking man who’d been waiting for Ragnar and Lagertha at the arrivals gate. “It is not the fault of my parents, they did not know I was here.”

“My son did not know someone had sent a berserker after him,” Lagertha says, pointedly moving so that she’s between him and Athelstan. “Why would he? Why would anyone who knew a berserker had been set on them _knowingly_ bring that with them?”

“Also, to be fair, the conflicts form is primarily concerned with potential connections to eldritch powers, and that is clearly _not_ eldritch,” Athelstan says. “I did check the section that said there might be additional earthly conflicts and see the addendum, and the addendum was caveated that we hadn’t run any restricted-clearance spells to verify because—”

“Okay, okay, just…” the Miskatonic rep rubs one hand over her face “…is that it? Or are you going to need extra security on your way inland?”

Ragnar, Lagertha, and their son Bjorn all look blankly at her. “…the berserker is dead?” Bjorn finally volunteers.

The Miskatonic rep looks at him, narrow-eyed, and then raises her hand so one of the yellow suits detours off. “Go put in a request for a background check. I’ve got a call with John in two hours anyway, I’ll get him to sign off on it then and in the meantime get everything together so we can do it without holding up the flight.”

“Well, wait, isn’t that a bit much?” Athelstan says, blinking. “I don’t think—all right, fine, this was unexpected, but—I think Bjorn was just following over to give his parents something, I don’t think he’s coming with us…”

Bjorn brightens at being able to explain. “Yes, exactly. My father did not take some personal things that are his, so I brought them. So now I am going back to Norway.”

“You couldn’t just ship them, with everything else you shipped?” Miskatonic’s rep says, back to glowering at Athelstan. 

“Well, my father did not _know_ he had not taken them,” Bjorn says, sounding annoyed. “They were being held by someone who did not deserve to have them, and we had only just gotten them back when we heard that he and my mother were coming here to America, and did not know when they would be back.”

“This ‘they’ happen to be the same people who sent the berserker?” Miskatonic’s rep asks.

“We could just sit down and do an extra intake interview, I don’t think you need to run a background check,” Athelstan says, spotting his opening. “We didn’t know Bjorn was coming, but now he’s here, so we can ask him who might want to kill him or his parents.”

Bjorn frowns. “But I am leaving.”

Lagertha draws a breath as if to say something, possibly to offer to explain everything for Bjorn, and Athelstan shoots her a warning look. She cocks her head, startled and puzzled in equal measures, and he feels guilty about it; she is Bjorn’s mother, after all. But on the other hand, the last impression they want to give is that they withheld information.

“Also, the berserker is dead, as you can see,” Ragnar says, because he was standing on Athelstan’s other side and didn’t see the warning look. “There is not much to tell. If they were strong enough to come on their own, they would have, and since they were not, they sent him. He is dead, so now Bjorn will go back and find them.”

“Yes. Yes, I will,” Bjorn says, suddenly relaxing. He nods emphatically.

“Can we…if I could…just for a second,” Athelstan says, gesturing more than a little frantically towards the nearest corner.

The Miskatonic rep looks unimpressed and uninclined to cooperate. “They’re werewolves,” she says flatly. “They’re still going to hear whatever soft-soap you’re about to feed me about how this was all an unfortunate accident and they didn’t really mean it and aside from the several hundred pounds of corpse over there, there’s nothing to see.”

One of the white suits, who’ve been standing around along with the now-superfluous Customs officer, shuffles a little as they try to get a better view. It’s a small sound, just the rustle of plastic, but for some reason it really grates on Athelstan’s nerves.

“Well, all right, then would you like instead to detain us so you can pry into a dispute that has nothing to do with you and that likely won’t implicate any restricted-access knowledge or personnel if you just left it alone, instead of sending follow-up investigators like you’ll have to if you open a full file on this?” Athelstan snaps. “And why are we even worried about where he came from? Doesn’t it matter more to you how he got in? Isn’t this location supposed to be secured for Deep One processing?”

A short silence prevails after that. The Miskatonic rep is still looking disdainfully at Athelstan, but her expression has a strangely frozen quality to it, all of the strength in it gone. A couple of the yellow hazmat suits have their helmets bent together, and even though they have a phone in front of them, Athelstan has the strong suspicion that he’s actually what they’re interested in.

“Is that a different word for shoggoth?” When everyone looks at him, Ragnar gives a careless, sheepish shrug. “I read the airport paper. The Special Evacuation Section lists the shoggoth, not the Deep One.”

Ragnar knows the difference between a shoggoth and a Deep One, Athelstan is quite sure, because Athelstan spent a significant part of their trans-Atlantic flight bringing him and Lagertha up to speed on authorized and non-authorized Cthulhic species. He also knows a shoggoth is much higher on the security-threat scale than a Deep One.

Miskatonic’s rep presses her lips together, then looks at something on her phone. Then at Athelstan, and then at the…splatter scene. Then she looks back at Athelstan. “Anything or anyone else going to try and get at you in the next three hours?”

“No,” Athelstan says, and then grimaces. He can’t help glancing over at Ragnar and Bjorn.

“No,” Ragnar says, and widens his eyes in an attempt at persuasive sincerity when the rep looks at him.

She patently isn’t convinced, but after another moment’s thought, she just points at a doorway. “There’s the waiting room. We’re moving your flight up ten hours, so get any family reunions out of the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole werewolf concept has a lot of (as far as I know/read) unexplored potential in reviewing toxic masculinity. So do Lovecraft's original stories, which as several others who are much more eloquent than me (do read the Lovecraft Reread [blog](https://www.tor.com/series/the-lovecraft-reread/)) have observed, are really trying to jam strangely postmodern neurotic, nerdy, physically-inept male characters into the action/adventure mode of pulp fiction's Golden Age. Lovecraft was very good friends with Robert E. Howard, creator of _Conan the Barbarian_ (and they had the occasional world crossover). But let me finish putting in the Vikings before Jason Momoa wanders in.
> 
> For those of you who don't watch _Vikings_ , a berserker there is a person, but basically someone's who's leaned all the way into the bloodlust and who goes around dressing like a bear and hiring themselves out for mercenary/assassin work (most Vikings on the show are more like part-time warriors, you harvest in the summer and go raiding in the winter rather than hanging being bored in the great hall).


	5. Chapter 5

On the one hand, Athelstan doesn’t particularly enjoy spending time in airports, or going to or from them—especially with all of the additional security checks his Averoigne-bestowed magic requires—so getting to California twelve hours ahead of schedule isn’t a terrible prospect. On the other hand, he’s just gotten off a very long flight and witnessed a rather gory fight to the death, and having a little bit more time to refresh and recover himself would have been nice.

“You could lie down,” Lagertha suggests. When he looks over at her, she reaches out and slides her fingers into his hair.

Athelstan goes still, mind racing between half a dozen excuses as to why this is not a good time and another half-dozen justifications why he very much would like to do something that’d take said mind off things, and in the meantime, Lagertha…does not pull their heads together. Instead she frowns, her fingertips lightly pressing at a few points around his ear and temple before finally settling along the hairline.

“You are having a headache,” she pronounces, as a delightful tingling coolness starts to spread out from where she’s touching him. “You should lie down. Give me the laptop. You are adjusting to the time zone and the blue light will not help you.”

“I—” Athelstan doesn’t defend the laptop but he does dart his eyes over to the two sets of doors at the left “—don’t you want to talk to your son?”

Lagertha smiles as she sets the laptop into one of the bags scattered around their feet. “Yes, of course. But he is still in the shower, and I can wait until he has finished. This Miskatonic is already unhappy with us and I told him and Ragnar to make sure we do not ruin more things here.”

Athelstan twitches and Lagertha’s gaze sharpens, but she doesn’t say anything. Just stares at him, silently encouraging, until he sighs and admits to himself that he does have a crick in his neck and his eyes are burning a little and it would be nice to rest for a second. Then, looking pleased with herself, Lagertha scoots over so that she can pull his head onto her shoulder.

“I don’t think they’re unhappy,” Athelstan mutters. “Annoyed, obviously, there’s no denying that, but by their standards, a dead berserker is really not that much of a…so a berserker is a type of were, isn’t it?”

“They are, at the beginning.” Lagertha shifts slightly, legs angling out, and Athelstan obligingly lifts his head to accommodate her. When she moves back, she’s—her shoulder is not where it was, it’s her breast instead, and she starts to curl Athelstan’s hair around her fingers before he can pull back. “But they do not…you must remember, when you are one or the other, that you are both. This is the difference between a were and between a…a beast.”

“A berserker doesn’t do that, I take it,” Athelstan says. He’s distracting himself, he realizes that, but at the same time it’s fascinating. 

Lagertha is silent for a moment, but in a thoughtful way. “Not quite. They are…they do not forget who they are, this is not like a _kanima_ , but they do not want to be human. They do not _forget_ they are human, they do not want to be. This is important.”

There are some interesting potential parallels to ghoul changelings, and Athelstan’s had a few friendships with ghouls during his time at Brichester—they dominate the IT staff and he’s always been very careful to not offend anyone who can cut off his online access to the library—and he wants to ask, but stops himself since they haven’t yet discussed ghouls. He did mention them in his little Cthulhic entity briefing and Ragnar and Lagertha said just enough for him to understand werewolves and ghouls have a complicated history. And also, _kanima_ is a new term for him.

“What are you doing?” Lagertha says.

Athelstan stops with his hand midway into his laptop bag. He guiltily pulls it back, then notices that in his absentminded stooping, he’s also slid his head well down Lagertha’s chest, his lips nearly nuzzling her neckline. “Er.”

“I can tell you wish to know about the _kanima_ , and the berserker. I will remember, you do not have to take a note,” Lagertha says, voice warmly amused. Her fingers slip onto the side of his throat as he struggles with the blush flaming into his cheeks. “But first we should talk about how annoyed they are. There is paperwork for this, I think?”

“There is paperwork for everything,” Athelstan says under his breath. He sounds irritated, and he really shouldn’t be, or at least he should make sure it doesn’t come off as if he’s annoyed with Lagertha. His hand goes halfway down to the bag again before he stops himself. “We can fill it out when Ragnar and Bjorn are out. That is, not that you couldn’t, but I—well, they think we deliberately didn’t tell them everything, and just to be sure, I just think—”

Lagertha turns towards him, sending his face into the soft, sloping dip between her breasts. More than a little distracting, to the point where he wonders if he should pop into the shielded chamber and rub one out before they get on the next plane.

“We will go over it again,” she says, firmly. She’s silent for a moment, her fingers slowing in his hair. Then, because he’s rather nose-deep in her cleavage, he senses rather than hears her slight clearing of the throat. “We did try to list everything for you.”

“I know, I wasn’t saying you didn’t,” Athelstan says. Then he remembers how Gisla had acted. “Also, if anyone said anything like that to you—”

“You are very protective,” Lagertha says, and he feels the press of her lips to the top of his head. Then she settles back, her hand dropping to his back where she occasionally taps her fingers against his shoulderblade in thought. “Ragnar and I do not care what others think. We never have. I think this is one reason why quite a lot of people still want to kill us, even though we spent twenty years in jars.”

Athelstan starts to say something, then thinks the better of it. She doesn’t need to be reassured right now, it’s quite clear from the tone of her voice, and he’d do better to just listen.

“But there are a lot of them. We tried to list everyone we could think of, even for the children.” A rare twist of self-deprecation comes into Lagertha’s voice; usually Ragnar’s the one making fun of himself. “This is what happens when you are twenty years older, and cannot remember it.”

“It’s not that hard to amend the form,” Athelstan says.

“But they are annoyed with you,” Lagertha says. “They are changing how they treat you because of this. We care what they think about _you_.”

Athelstan pushes himself up and back. Lagertha allows it, although she lets the weight of her hand drag it along Athelstan’s shoulder before she moves her arm away. She’s watching him in that way that makes him think it’s less about what she sees in his expression and more about what her other senses are telling her—heartbeat, breathing, scent. Looking for any sign of flight.

“I don’t think that this is going to be that much of a problem,” he tells her. She looks skeptical and he impulsively puts his hand out over hers, clasping it against her leg. “I truly don’t. Yes, they’re annoyed, but so am I—I really meant it when I was asking them how the berserker even got into the site. Here and where we’re going are supposed to be rated for the highest incursion levels, and Miskatonic’s Security team is very well-known for its competence—”

“So I should be asking whether they will protect you?” Lagertha says.

She’s not entirely joking. “No, that’s not what I meant,” Athelstan says. “I meant—”

A scratchy-jerking noise makes Athelstan glance over, only to start sharply as a damp Ragnar finishes settling himself into the nearest armchair. “I am not interrupting,” Ragnar says as Lagertha glowers at him.

“You are,” she mutters, but she contents herself with just pulling Athelstan back onto the couch. “And you were saying. This is not going to be a problem, that they are annoyed—”

“She was very rude,” Athelstan has to admit. He should shoot Ecbert an email about that, actually—he’s not sure why he didn’t think to do that before. It’s both unjustified and should give Ecbert something to do, so hopefully he doesn’t show up in California the way he did in Norway. “But this really shouldn’t be that big of a deal. The research site we’re going to requires such high clearance that they’ll have checked everyone who works _there_ whether they know you. And if it’s about foreign conflicts you just bring in, they’re not going to be Cthulhic because you didn’t know anything about that till you were unjarred.”

From the way Ragnar’s looking at them, he obviously was following this conversation long before he stepped out of the decontamination chamber. “But I do not think they like to have unexpected bodies, even if it has nothing to do with the aliens,” he says.

Athelstan sighs. “No, but then, nobody really likes that sort of surprise, do they?”

Ragnar is on the verge of saying something, but slouches back, grinning, under Lagertha’s raised brows. 

“Honestly, I’d think the main worry they have should be over the resident werewolf pack, but you went through all the bios and you’ve never even heard of them, you said,” Athelstan goes on. “And I didn’t get any ping that they had heard of you. So there isn’t anything around that to worry about, is there?”

“I do not think so,” Lagertha says, which is unusually hedging for her. She seems to realize that, grimacing when Athelstan gives her a curious look; from the armchair, Ragnar is still sprawled out but is watching intently. “We did look at them. We also emailed all of our children, and also Floki—”

“Aslaug too,” Ragnar mutters. He tenses as Lagertha pauses, then visibly relaxes when she says nothing. “Nothing. Even Bjorn, who _has_ been to America before—”

“Once, very long ago, on a stupid trip by car with his band,” Lagertha says, with a mixture of exasperation and fondness that only a mother can have. “I do not think they paid much attention to anything except how often Halfdan could stand on famous places, to go from the photos.”

Ragnar doesn’t disagree, says his head-bob. “None of us think we have met before, or heard of them before. The form said they are very famous, but not to us.”

“Well, then, it shouldn’t go too badly,” Athelstan says, with as much belief as he can muster. “It’s a blank slate on both sides, and it’s not as if you want to start a new pack on their territory, so I can’t see what they would object to. Unless there’s something I don’t know?”

The two of them look at each other, long enough that Athelstan’s nerves start to twitch again. Then he jumps; Ragnar wheels around and doesn’t make a sound, but whatever his face looks like it is enough to make Bjorn, freshly and loudly exited from the other decontam chamber, duck his head and fold in his shoulders. Ragnar turns back around, more slowly; he casually rubs his hand against the chair arm, making a light noise to go with the movement.

“No,” he says, and then looks at Lagertha, who also shakes her head. “No. We will need to meet them, when we arrive. But we said in the form and we will say then that we are only there with you, and we do not care about their land.”

“Right,” Athelstan says. “Then it really shouldn’t be a problem.”

* * *

Just when Stiles thinks he’s caught up on all of the briefings and amended briefings and also made sure Peter and Derek have the important sections, he gets news that Athelstan’s team is touching down a day ahead of schedule. “Dad, I think this is kind of major.”

“Yeah, it is,” his dad mutters, frowning and hunching over his laptop at Melissa’s kitchen table. He picks up his phone, texts somebody, puts it back down, hits ‘enter’ on the keyboard, and then picks his phone up again and puts in a quick call to the current site leader to tell them they need to close up around the Nemeton early today. Then he looks at Stiles. “What?”

“Nothing,” Stiles says, hastily willing his eyes to not come off as ‘giant singularities of speculation,’ as a slightly-drunk and very irritated Lydia had once dubbed them.

He completely fails, judging from how his dad sighs and pushes away from the table and fully turns around to face him. “Stiles, don’t jump to conclusions.”

“I’m not!” Stiles says, throwing his hands out. “I’m standing very still and watching you tear apart five levels of security planning on less than twenty-four hours’ notice, and I’m not offering any suggestions at all!”

His dad stares at him, eyes slightly lidded with exasperation. The glow of the laptop screen on the table goes purple, then normal, then yellow with stubby transparent cilia around the frame, but it’s not till the laptop emits a series of soft notification chimes that the man even twitches. Even then, he mostly keeps his eyes on Stiles.

“Which I am trying very, very hard not to do,” Stiles adds.

“Yeah, I can tell,” his father mutters. He starts to turn back, then pauses. Then sighs and waves his hand towards the empty seat across from him. “Okay, fine, have a look at these warding specs. Team’s got its hands full with getting the scientists to close up shop down by the tree, so—just keep in mind this isn’t an excuse for you get fancy with your latest theory about intersectional runic theory, son.”

Stiles is in that chair and making guesses about the specs from the number of layers to the cilia before his dad even has the computer fully turned towards him. “I would never.”

“That’s what the University of Leng said when they wanted you to permanently transfer over,” his dad mutters, pushing further back from the table. He stands up, putting one hand to his back and twisting a little at the waist, and then grimaces like it feels worse when his bones pop. “If I go get a top-up on coffee, are you going to stay out of my email?”

“Dunno, is there a reason why I shouldn’t be in your email?” Stiles automatically responds, halfway through rejiggering a workflow. Then he fully registers what’s going on and looks all the way up. “This have anything to do with the war-room in the living room?”

“It’s not a war-room!” Cora immediately shouts. “Nobody’s going to war! We’re all gonna get together and talk about our feelings and—”

“Shut up,” Derek says, sounding closer to them than to her.

A second later he appears in the kitchen, looking harassed; when he sees Stiles’ dad on his feet, he minimally straightens himself but somehow that transmutes his expression into just grumpy. He starts to point at the room.

“Yeah, we know, nobody’s going to die, you’re all committed to making sure we don’t have inexplicable homicides while we’ve got a visitor in town,” Stiles’ dad says, more or less friendly, as he moves around Derek to the coffee-maker. He’s more distracted than he looks, since he almost gestures a standard charm before catching himself and just punching at the brew-strength options. “Melissa already talked to me about it.”

“Oh. Good. Peter’s working with Laura on it too,” Derek says. He tracks Stiles’ dad as the man tinkers with the coffee-maker, slowly going from tensely expectant to a little bewildered.

Stiles waves his hand to catch Derek’s eye and Derek turns, going stiff again, which if Stiles hadn’t figured out Derek was dreading follow-up questions, basically puts a big caption on it with a hand-drawn arrow down at Derek’s head. Not that Stiles really had any, but he had been going to hiss an update to Derek on what’s going on with their end. He thinks the better of it now and just motions for Derek to go back to the living room. Which Derek does, sideways, clearly thinking he’s got to sneak out of there.

“You think they’re worried?” Stiles’ father asks a couple minutes later, coming back with his filled cup.

“I thought you talked to Melissa,” Stiles mutters. By now he’s well and truly in the middle of fine-tuning some runic code so he doesn’t look up.

Just by how Stiles’ dad grunts when he flops back into his chair tells Stiles that the man is mulling over something (Stiles still isn’t fully fluent in Derek-grunting, which belongs to a totally different linguistic family of passive-aggressiveness, but he’ll admit he was raised with a good ear for these types of things). The couple seconds that pass before Stiles’ father speaks tell Stiles how important that something is.

“I don’t think she or Chris are downplaying it—well, you know, the way people around here sometimes do,” Stiles’ dad finally says. He sips at his coffee. “Mostly I think she’s pissed off it’s taking her so long to get rid of them.”

“What’s the problem?” Stiles says. He finishes his current line and gives it a once-over, then hits the button to send it into the virtual modeling space. Then he looks up, and enjoys the rare opportunity to give his father a ‘seriously?’ face. “I asked Derek and Peter, and they both said it’s nothing to do with them, Laura wants to work it out, so I left it alone. All I know is that Scott got told off-limits and Laura felt the need to follow that up with siccing Erica and Boyd on the poor guy, as if he doesn’t have self-control—but again, left it alone. Respecting boundaries. Leaving people to their own business. It’s what I’m about.”

Stiles’ father’s lips twitch a couple times. Okay, a lot, and then he makes a suspicious laughing noise into his cup as he slurps some more coffee. But when he comes back up again, he’s pretty serious. “Well, so far as I understand it, some hunter’s poking around thinking they’re going to make trouble.”

It is a huge sign of maturity that Stiles’ dad had better appreciate that all Stiles does is give him a deeply withering look.

“Melissa didn’t really want to go into details either,” Stiles’ dad says, once he’s had his little fatherly trolling moment. He shrugs and glances absently at the living room. “Not really sure why. Like I said, from what she said it sounded standard.”

“Did you ask Chris?” Stiles asks. “I mean…trust but verify?”

His dad glances at the living room again, as if somebody might be lurking around listening and maybe he wants certain things to be heard. “Yeah, he says this is another one of those newcomers, so he doesn’t really have much to add till they figure out how they’re going to handle the guy.”

“What, that’s up for debate? I thought you said this was standard,” Stiles says, mostly just to say something. But then his dad purses his lips and Stiles _knows_ that expression.

“Don’t get excited,” his father says, warily watching as Stiles pulls his chair around the corner of the table and positions it so he’s blocking the primary exit routes. “I’m still not interested in doing any more SOP variances than I have to, especially with all this extra buffering we’ve got to get up for Athelstan’s visit.”

“Well, doesn’t that save us a lot of trouble? It’ll keep the local police out, and we both know that is a guaranteed Melissa trigger,” Stiles says.

His dad is not impressed with his foresight. “Son, the idea’s to get out of this with minimal alterations to reality. That includes memory alterations.”

“Hey, I know, I just recertified to ten different codes of ethics last month,” Stiles says, putting his hands up.

“Ten?” his dad says. “I thought you dropped the double-dissertation idea. Look, I have nothing against cross-disciplinary work, but I told you, anything that’s got a loss-of-sanity rate over—”

“I’m just doing one dissertation, Dad, that’s still the same. I don’t want to be locked into Miskatonic for my entire career either,” Stiles says, making a face. “But since they’re fighting over whether the Nemeton’s quasi-daemonic or quasi-eldritch botanical, I got certified in both subcodes just in case. You know how Botany’s like.”

“Yeah,” his dad says, attention drifting back over to his laptop. “Don’t know where they find the energy between getting parasite seeds removed from their brain stems and filing Mi-Go exchange requests…starting to think Athelstan’s coming in just to settle it so we don’t have to institutionalize the entire faculty again.”

Stiles sits up. “Oh?”

“Not that you are going to repeat that to anyone,” his dad says, eyes flicking back over to him. “But…yeah. It was getting to the point I was going to start having containment teams attend the faculty meetings. I think the Dean got tired of it and wanted to kick it outside, and Brichester’s Dean owes him a favor.”

“Well, it’s not like they’re gonna mess with someone from Brichester, and Athelstan’s got the credentials, even if he hasn’t defended yet,” Stiles says. “Makes sense. So what about this hunter?”

For a second he thinks his dad’s just going to deflect again, and then the man sighs instead. “Honestly, I think his visit’s the problem,” his dad mutters. “They’re trying to not just kill the guy, or let the Nemeton do it, but he’s not getting scared off and there’s only so much you can do without letting everybody in on it.”

“Can’t they just drug him, drive him out of town, and dump him?” Stiles says. “And to be clear, not that I’m advocating, but I’m pointing out that this doesn’t involve memory alteration and _also_ is a well-established tactic. According to _Scott_.”

“Who when somebody suggested it, pointed out that the Miskatonic Bystander Management coursebook has three separate case studies on why this usually makes it _more_ likely the person’s going to wander back into town at the wrong time,” Stiles’ father says dryly.

Stiles makes a face. “I hate that coursebook, it’s so oversimplified Derek said reading it was like reading the shot list for his last horror movie. I don’t know why they’re making Allison take the undergrad version of that class.”

His dad raises an eyebrow, not so much silently asking Stiles whether he really wants to get into the fine points of a course his dad spent the first three years of his time at Miskatonic fighting to get made mandatory for all field researchers as double-dog daring him. Very unfair when they both know anecdotes aren’t a replacement for statistical analysis, and the actual stats are a lot more nuanced, and okay, yeah, Stiles realizes this is not the battle he needs to fight, if he really wants the inside track on what’s going on.

“Well, okay, anyway. So. We’re just gonna work around the hunter,” Stiles says.

“We’re working around them,” his dad nods.

Stiles doesn’t say anything. His father waits, brows creeping up, and when Stiles doesn’t rise to the bait, the man shrugs and twists his laptop back around to look at what Stiles did. He blinks twice, raises one hand, and then puts it down as he frowns and leans in for a closer look.

“So, hey, I still get to be in—”

“Yeah, you’re still going to meet Athelstan,” his dad says. “In your _official_ capacity as a student attached to the site, Stiles. Pack liaison’s already covered.”

“Dad, I _have_ caught up on all the paperwork,” Stiles says, annoyed.

His father briefly looks up from his laptop. “You are?”

Stiles nods.

“Oh. Okay, good,” the man says, going back to work. “Huh. This part with the deconstructed electric pentangles, this is—”

“Look, they told Athelstan we have werewolves here too, right?” Stiles finally blurts out. “And that the local pseudo-Cthulhic entity really likes them? I mean, _really_ likes them?”

Stiles’ dad looks up again. Then shifts himself back, studying Stiles over the edge of the laptop, which he slowly pushes down out of the way. “This coming from you or from Derek and Peter?”

“Me,” Stiles says. He inserts a significant pause. “They don’t want to mess things up any more than Melissa or Chris do.”

The pause is acknowledged by a brow-lift, and then Stiles’ dad sighs. “Yeah, I know, it’s all…for the record, I’m not thrilled about the timing. I’m flying back to the main campus for the post-mortem on this one, because no matter how much hell Botany’s raising with the Dean, that’s no reason to bypass all the notice periods. But yeah, they’ve been sent briefings. And Anamaria’s handling the customs liaising to make sure they actually read them.”

Anamaria’s one of Stiles’ dad’s best, and hearing she’s gotten looped in does make Stiles feel a little better. He still can’t help thinking like he hasn’t quite covered something here, but…on the other hand, he’s not sure what else can get squeezed in before Athelstan and team show up in the morning.

“Everybody knows what’s scheduled to happen, and what we want to actually happen. That’s as much as you can control, kid,” Stiles’ dad says, guessing his train of thought. “And at the end of the day, this isn’t something out of the _Necronomicon_ , it’s just some people coming to town.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Which is why it seems harder to deal with, Stiles almost points out. But he can tell his dad doesn’t want to go that way, and just wants to get on with the practical parts, and he can’t really say that’s not what they should be doing right now. So they’re just going to have to let it play out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm rather fond of recent Lovecraftian fiction which takes Lovecraft's original devolved ghouls and upgrades them to a completely separate civilization which prioritizes storage of knowledge (since they're underground, and tend to retrieve things that humans aboveground lose). The idea that werewolves and ghouls might have a lot in common was explored in a darker way by Amanda Downum's _The Tenderness of Jackals_ , which I recommend.
> 
> If the Vikings are going modern, Bjorn and Halfdan are going to have a brotastic Scandi-metal road trip somewhere in the background.
> 
> I just very much enjoy the idea that one of the few people who can out-deadpan Stiles is his own father. It's a shame Linden Ashby didn't get to play more into that on the show, since he can do such a good one.
> 
> Parasite seeds are from _Leng_ by Marc Laidlaw and are actually of the fungal variety, although there are a couple pulp-fiction Golden Age stories about parasitic orchids. Also I know that fungi aren't plants but I think of Miskatonic as a very schizo mix of holdover academia (i.e. refuse to recategorize because it's _tradition_ , and also, they don't want to have to redo ancient magical defenses) and super-modernism).
> 
> Anamaria is from _Pirates of the Caribbean_. One of my favorite characters from a franchise that is not aging well.


	6. Chapter 6

After they get back to Stiles’ dad’s rental, Derek and Peter are pretty subdued and Stiles is just…kind of tired. He’s been pulling in a lot of extra work, on top of his regular research, to help his dad prep for everything, and so instead of finishing up all the papers written by people who’ve been cowriters on Athelstan’s papers, he reluctantly concludes that turning in early is a better way to get ready. Peter’s always down to cuddle, so he’s expecting the man to join in, but he’s a little surprised when Derek also piles in.

“I spent the entire evening keeping Cora and Erica from going at each other, and Laura from throwing them both out,” he mutters as he edges within range of Stiles’ arm. “They’re the ones who pissed off Parrish, they can cover his patrol.”

“I thought those two were dating?” Stiles says, pretending like his hand isn’t finding its way to Derek’s abs for a nice, soothing belly-rub. “Erica and Cora? And they have a platonic hypotenuse in Boyd or something like that?”

Derek shrugs most of his head under the pillow. “He’s not a hypotenuse if he’s so far off he’s on a complete other plane.”

Stiles almost bolts up. “Derek, did you just make a _math_ joke?”

In answer, Derek’s humped shoulder and back is motionless under the blankets. It does appear real, and Stiles is less than an inch away from poking it when Peter intercepts his hand. “Camera _angles_ are important, I suppose,” Peter says, as his breath warms the side of Stiles’ neck and he artfully drapes himself to more or less lean Stiles back down onto the bed. “But let him be. Cora _was_ insufferable tonight.”

“She’s acting out because she’s nervous about these alphas, right?” Stiles says.

Peter pauses. Then leans back enough for them to look at each other—more for Stiles to see his expression than the other way around. He does that, physically acknowledges Stiles’ lack of werewolf senses, whenever he’s attempting to be sincere without any ulterior motives (Stiles figures Peter has just given up on trying to hide when his face does the freeze-reboot thing). 

“Laura and your father spoke,” Peter says. “It’ll be a mediated encounter. I don’t anticipate any issues.”

Stiles…doesn’t really want to dig into this, he suddenly realizes. He feels like he should, if only to make sure nothing gets missed because ignorance really does _not_ save you when it comes to mentally invasive cosmic horror entities, but…Peter’s default setting isn’t exactly to try and smooth things over. If he’s making the effort, then he also is nervous, and if he's nervous and _not_ dealing with it by setting up a trap or manipulating a minor turf war or something like that, then…he’s really trying to help.

So instead Stiles just nods, and burrows down between the two of them. He and Peter make out a little, and then Peter mouths down his jaw, but it doesn’t really feel like a sex mood. Peter confirms he feels the same when he makes it to Stiles’ throat and then just presses his face into it, not doing anything in particular, not even suggestive whiffing. He does sigh a little, relaxing, when Stiles throws an arm over him, but that’s it. So that’s the night before.

* * *

The morning of, Derek gets up before Stiles. He gets up before _Peter_ , who is always the first one up on days where they’re expecting drama, and he even _starts the coffeemaker_. By _himself_.

“I followed all the instructions,” he says, slightly defensive, when Stiles continues to just stare at the coffee.

“Oh, um,” Stiles says, frantically trying to dig up something complimentary that won’t touch off one of Derek’s issues. Since it’s clear that, even if he’s up and dressed, he’s still not a morning person.

Peter, still damp from his morning shower, leans over and sniffs. He pauses, then goes around Stiles and plucks the mug from Derek’s hand to push under the coffeemaker. “Laura texted, she’s changed her mind again,” he mutters.

Derek had been staring after Peter with widened eyes but at getting his cup stolen, he relaxes back into his usual grouchy state. “Yeah, I know.”

“Well?” Peter says after a moment, turning to look meaningfully at him.

“Why do _I_ have to call her?” Derek snaps as he gets out another mug and pushes it under the spigot. “You’re the one she actually sometimes listens to.”

“You’re the one with the car we won’t be using if she comes over here,” Peter says.

This is not really a good reason for making Derek run interference, and they both know it, and even through morning blear, Stiles can see how the two of them are settling into a well-worn groove. Derek looks surly, which Peter loftily disregards and moves like he’s leaving the kitchen. This triggers deeply-ingrained reflexes in Stiles, who yelps and grabs at the departing coffee, and has sucked down half the cup before he remembers and looks guiltily up. Peter, sighing, releases the coffee to him and then turns as if to talk to Derek.

Who’s already back to going to the bedroom to get his phone, grumbling to himself. Stiles bites his lip, but then Peter wants to discuss strategizing around Laura’s entirely predictable but unfortunate last-minute bout of insecurity, and Stiles gets distracted (it’s not the adjectives, anyone who’s made it past volume three of Carter’s diaries has lifetime immunity, but it’s the _tone_ Peter uses, all that creamy aural curl). 

So anyway, they get themselves together and out the door and into Derek’s car, not Laura’s, but in a nod to her not-a-freakout alarm text, they show up thirty minutes early to the diner near the preserve. 

Obviously, they’re not taking Athelstan out to the Nemeton right away, and with all of the werewolf greeting rituals to dance around, they need somewhere that’s vaguely neutral, isn’t within the sightlines of a zillion suburbanites, and is pretty resistant to property damage. Also, the diner owner is one of those few Beacon Hills residents who sees the weirdness for what it is and neither wants to exploit it nor wants to have a panic attack over it. They genuinely seem to just want to sell coffee and pie, and as long as you are decent to the waitstaff and pay up, it doesn’t matter what you do on a full moon night or whether you have tentacles under that coat.

“They even save the peanut dust for Quint,” Scott says, rubbing a drowsy-looking little head that just peeks out of his hoodie. “Although we have to watch that. It’s mostly salt, and I don’t know that that much sodium is good for him.”

“We could look into that,” Stiles says, and then raises both hands as Quint cracks open an eye. “Noninvasively, after full informed consent, and for purposes of health assessment and not just wanting to research him.”

Quint goes back to sleep. Scott gives him a half-smile, but shakes his head. “No, I don’t—”

“Okay, Cora’s where I told her to be, and so is the rest of the pack,” Laura says, coming over from where she and Allison have been consulting their phones. “Headcount’s on point. Do we have confirmation on their end?”

Scott looks a little strangely at her; she’s less manic than when they first showed up, but still talking faster and louder than she needs to. “Um, I have the visas from Miskatonic if you want to go over—” he starts.

“Yeah,” Stiles’ dad says, looking pointedly at Laura. “Nobody’s bringing extra bodies. They’re five minutes away and my team’s driving them and we know where all the weapons are.”

“All of them?” Laura repeats, aggressively.

Stiles’ dad continues to look levelly at her. He’s not using any magic or anything but Stiles recognizes that look as one developed out of years of dealing with Deep One delegations who can’t seem to remember that illegal saltwater dumps are _still_ pollution. 

Laura doesn’t exactly deflate, but she doesn’t object when Peter sidles up to her and casually mentions that he’d like a word before they arrive. “Okay,” she just says. “Because those were a lot of axes.”

Allison and Scott look over at Chris, for some reason, but he is professionally stonefaced as he stands by Melissa, who of all of them seems to be the only one who’s not nervous. She’s in animated conversation with the head of Miskatonic’s San Francisco security team, cradling a steaming cup of coffee.

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles’ dad says, with the calm of a man who plowed through the weapons inventory, redacted over a third of it, and then passed it on to her.

“Okay,” Laura says again, backing up as Peter starts to look irritated with her. She rubs her hands on her hips, then abruptly stops mid-step. “Look, I know—I’m not saying you wouldn’t be doing this right. I just never have heard of an alpha coming just to _learn_ about something. Even all the summits Mom ran, everyone was always trying to get something out of each other.”

“That was completely different,” Peter says, his pitch varying sharply from high to low, as if he’s not sure whether he’s speaking to Stiles’ dad or to Laura. He glances at Stiles’ dad and then at Stiles, and then opens his mouth, clearly settling on Laura as his target.

“If they aren’t really here for that, then they can go back and wait in San Francisco with Shirley,” Stiles’ dad says, nodding at the San Francisco lead.

Laura blinks. Peter’s less obvious about it, but he’s also caught off-guard. “Really?” she says.

“Well, yeah,” Stiles’ father says, frowning. “They put that on their paperwork, they’d better live up to it. If they don’t, they’re not authorized to be here and I don’t really care what arrangement Brichester’s asked for.”

“Visiting scholar privileges don’t include getting around local rules and regs,” Stiles says, thinking he knows why Peter’s surprised. And thinking that damn it, he should have drilled in last night instead of just drifting off. He’s been so excited about getting to talk to Athelstan in person that he’s just been taking Peter and Derek’s relative calm at face value, but he should know better. “You step out of line, Dad can overrule even the Dean. And it’s not like Brichester’s Security is going to complain about it, they’d do the same thing to us.”

“Oh,” Laura says. She pauses, her mouth half-ready to go on, and then her head turns.

So do the heads of all the werewolves. They’re eerily silent for a few seconds, staring in the same direction, and then they’re…still silent, but in motion, repositioning themselves across the diner’s parking lot like a choreographed dance. Laura goes nearest to the driveway, centering herself between two of the Miskatonic security team, but then she glances over and she shifts over. It’s not enough to let Scott come up beside her, but he doesn’t do that anyway; he goes so he’s level with her but standing on the other side of one of the security team members. Then he looks back, gesturing, and Allison comes up next to him.

A bumping noise makes people look at Chris, who’s leaning against the diner, seemingly out of the way in the back except for that sniper rifle he’s got. The stock banged against the brick and that’s kind of sloppy for him. He seems to know it, grimacing and looking down, while Melissa eases out of her current conversation to cross in front of him to talk to Stiles’ dad instead. 

Derek was also back against the wall but he comes up towards Laura, joining Peter, so that they’re both behind her and somewhat in front of Stiles. The two of them glance back at Stiles; Derek looks more uncomfortable than menacing, which is odd, given this part is usually his jam. But then Stiles thinks about it, and gets it: they’re backing up Laura, who ultimately asked them to be her two instead of her other pack members, or even Deaton (who has security clearance issues anyway, but still, it doesn’t seem like Laura even tried to get him included). Neither of them objected to it, as far as Stiles can tell—and Peter usually drops more than a hint if he thinks Laura’s twisting their arms—but they still feel weird about not hanging around him.

So it's shaping up to be a three-way meet, actually. The Hales, and then Scott with the Argents—Melissa is getting categorized more as Stiles’ dad’s team, if Stiles is reading everything correctly. He really should’ve expected that, since Scott is _not_ pack with the Hales, even though they’re pretty much on the same side these days. But they don’t usually make the differentiation this obvious.

And then the car comes around the corner and up the driveway. Stiles sees how Anamaria’s scowling over the wheel and can’t help sticking his arms up to get her attention; she sees him and looks noticeably happier.

She pulls over, and then starts to get out, but before she can, the back door on one side opens and a short blonde woman steps out. She takes one long step away from the car and then surveys things. One of the alphas, Lagertha.

Laura…does something, maybe one of those subvocal growls, and Lagertha’s eyes immediately shoot over to her. The two of them draw themselves up, but then, on the other side of the car, a blond guy with tattoos visible even from where Stiles is standing unfolds himself into the air. He is tall, at least as tall as Derek, and while he’s not quite as broad in the shoulders, his muscles are really obvious through the thin t-shirt he’s wearing. He’s also grinning, with teeth, and Stiles almost feels more than sees Scott tense up. 

Stiles looks at his dad, who’s definitely onto the vibes and who has one hand half-raised but who isn’t signaling yet. Which, okay, but Stiles puts his hand on his phone just in case.

And that’s when Quint decides to wake up and leap into the air. Scott startles, then nearly jumps up after him before Allison gloms onto his arm. She at least still has her eye on the two alphas, who’ve immediately pushed back towards the car and into semi-crouches.

_“You are the one who knows how the old ones make children,”_ booms the Nemeton voice through Quint.

The male alpha, Ragnar, exclaims something in a non-English language, pointing at Quint. He’s got his claws out and Stiles can just tell Scott’s going to make something of this, even with Allison literally disabling one of his arms, so Stiles starts over.

Except that’s when a third person stumbles out of the car, wide-eyed, one hand absently waving his phone around as various protective wards flash in and out of view. “Oh!” Athelstan says. “Oh, that’s fantastic, I didn’t realize you were so far along the sentience scale…so you know the Great Old Ones? You know where your mutations came from? You’re aware of your own history?”

_“They make children,”_ the Nemeton says. _“How?”_

“Um, look, I think we’re skipping a couple…well, honestly, more like entire sections of the welcome protocol manual,” Stiles says, hastily dodging Anamaria’s outstretched arm. He does detour slightly to pat Peter on the arm, but then keeps on to where Scott’s just wormed out of Allison’s grip and has whipped off his hoodie to make a landing pad in case Quint’s mediumship suddenly breaks off. “Also, this is totally not what I thought—”

Athelstan knows he’s there, because when Stiles gets near enough, the dimly glowing wards part to make way, but all of Athelstan’s attention is on Quint. “Right, sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m Athelstan, I’m currently attached to Brichester—the University, not the singularity, though I do study near—anyway. Oh, also, obviously, I think you can tell I’ve got, that is, I’ve—”

Quint bobs. It comes off more impatient than confused, despite the blank staring eyes and the wildly-fanned tail-tentacles. _“You have come from the place of the one who tried to destroy me.”_

“I…did I?” Athelstan says, blinking hard, and then he looks down at his phone. “Did they say something about that in the briefing…”

“Hey, don’t!” Scott says, suddenly dropping his hoodie and lunging at something behind Stiles. “Don’t interrupt, that’s just gonna make the Nemeton annoyed.”

Stiles twists around just as a snarling, half-wolfed Ragnar hulks up to face Scott, who’s so busy looking determined about it that he’s kind of missing how Allison is backing him up with a crossbow. And also the strangely prehensile roots that have started to erupt through the pavement, and the fact that everybody with a Miskatonic security badge on now has a lurid yellow glow around their phone. “Whoa, hey, everyone, can we just—”

“Oh! Right, Shub-Niggurath, sorry, with everything that’s happened you wouldn’t believe it but I’d almost forgot—” Athelstan mumbles, before looking up. He sees Stiles’ wards clashing with his own—because yeah, Stiles is getting into the glowing-phone action too—and twists around, and his eyes widen.

And then things go…multi-dimensional. Stiles and Stiles’ dad shout from the Saaamaaa Ritual at the same time, with the rest of the security team coming in for the second stanza, and the weirdness telescopes down to something that isn’t on the verge of madness, but still isn’t exactly meant for human eyesight. 

“Oh, _damn_ ,” Athelstan says, and does something and then it’s all normal.

The world, anyway. The rest of them need a couple words to catch up and then safely abort, and then recalibrate to the idea that reality might not be about to shift into a Nyarlathotep-friendly plane of existence. Even Quint looks a little nauseated, floating off-kilter as he surveys them all.

_“I think the werewolves are upset,”_ the Nemeton says through Quint, the same way that a small child would point out to a complete stranger that their parents are having a screaming match so they can’t come to the phone right now. _“Stop that. Come back when they are not.”_

“…ow, my head— _Quint_!” Scott yelps, going from down on one knee and holding his skull to flipping his hoodie out to swoop the falling squirrel to safety.

In order to catch Quint, he ends up rolling near Athelstan’s feet. Athelstan jumps back, startled, and then bumps up against one of Stiles’ wards. He puts his hand out, looking apologetic, before suddenly twisting around. “No, wait!” he says urgently. “What are you—are you all right?”

Lagertha, who’s somehow gotten to Ragnar’s side of the car, mutters something in that non-English language—well, it’s Norwegian, Stiles guesses—as she waves vaguely at Laura’s direction. Since Laura’s now a lot closer to the two of them, bracing herself against the front of the car as she looks like she’s trying very hard not to throw up. Both Lagertha and Ragnar don’t look much better, though Ragnar pulls it together enough to tell Athelstan in guttural English to give them a moment. Then he and Lagertha go back to gripping the side of the car for dear life.

“Stiles?” Peter says, low but distinctly shaky.

When Stiles turns around, he finds that Peter’s gotten within six feet of him—Derek’s two yards back, kneeling and shaking his head—and has what looks like one of Stiles’ spellcasting extensions attached to his phone. The extension is dangerously doubled and Stiles hurries over to close off the spell and pull that out, since Peter’s out of breath. Peter nods his thanks, then puts his head back down and breathes very slowly.

“Were you…this wasn’t a vendetta, was it?” Athelstan is asking, sounding more than a little chagrined. “But everything cleared!”

“Yeah, look, maybe I don’t know who these people are but if you’re going to show up in my woods and bring a bunch of swirling floaty mouths to hell, I’m not cool with that,” Laura says, pushing herself up from the car.

Lagertha twists around, pushing Ragnar, who’s grinning again, despite being the color of unfresh fishbelly, out of the way. But before they can get into the werewolf posturing, Athelstan hurries over.

“They’re not mouths to hell, they’re localized extradimensional…look, never mind the jargon, the point is that that was me, not them, and I’m sorry,” he says. His hands are shaky, Stiles notices, but he’s looking Laura in the eye. “I didn’t mean to do that on purpose but your, ah, your resident _genius loci_ startled me a bit.”

“He put that in the paperwork,” Ragnar says. He pauses and coughs wetly into a fist. “The…‘semiconductive channeling of additional dimensional reality portals.’ So he told you.”

“That is totally _not_ what I thought that part meant, I thought that meant he just figured out a new gating architecture,” Stiles can’t help saying. “Not that he just _does_ them organically! I mean, did anyone else get that?”

Athelstan winces, hard, and Ragnar goes from smiling in a still-woozy but clearly intimidating way to just staring silently at Stiles. Which means Peter clamps a hand on Stiles’ shoulder while he and Derek and Scott all growl at the same time.

“Okay, run a perimeter sweep, nail down the groundings, and have the stability analysis in my inbox within the hour,” Stiles’ dad says over his shoulder, ambling up like this is just every other day for him (which, okay, it _is_ , but also…does he really need to give Stiles a look like _sit on that academic critique a minute, son_?). Then he turns around and snaps his fingers, and he’s not actually using magic but all the werewolves still look at him. “Everyone, let’s take this inside over a plate of something to eat. I don’t think we’re getting anywhere out here with the space-time ripples, and if I have to start knocking people out, we’re just gonna move back the site visit till I can trust it can happen without somebody showing up in the morgue.”

* * *

“I like this,” Ragnar says, cutting off more of the chicken-fried steak and swirling it around in thick white sauce. “I don’t think they are going to kill us. They would not feed us decent food if that was the case.”

Laura Hale, alpha of the resident pack, rolls her eyes. “For the umpteenth time, nobody here is planning on killing you. So long as you—”

“—are not here to steal your land or attack your pack,” Lagertha smoothly intervenes, with a smile that isn’t quite friendly. She stirs her straw around in her milkshake, then sips at it—or tries to. Frowning, she pulls the straw out of her mouth and wiggles the end as if to clear it. “Or to violate the fifty-seven pages of site restrictions that we received and read and acknowledged. Would you like me to show you our copy?”

“Athelstan,” Miskatonic’s head of security says, loudly. He’s not particularly impressed when Athelstan winces and jerks his head back around to look forward, or even, frankly, very reactive at all. He doesn’t even seem to blink. “So you were saying, about the, let’s see, it got written down as ‘autonomic reflexes tied to integrated dimensional-reformation abilities, see appendix’—”

“When I’m startled and I haven’t had sex in a while, I tend to open up passages between different dimensions,” Athelstan says. He rubs at the side of his face, then slumps down a little further under the incredulous look John Stilinski is giving him. “I know we wrote it up with a lot of ridiculous extra terms, but that’s how it’s down in my Brichester medical history and if it’d gotten written up any other way, the cross-check would have raised flags.”

John opens his mouth, then pauses. “Stiles, just drink some water,” he says without looking away from Athelstan. He pauses again, till the choking sounds stop. “Yeah, true, and I guess I can see why you didn’t want somebody calling up Medical to ask them to explain what the hell this means.”

“Oh, it’s not that I really mind so much as that they do a terrible job about it, even after we worked out some boilerplate for them, and I just thought I’d try and explain better in person. It is rather important information for anyone who cares about health and safety and the integrity of the universe,” Athelstan says. “So sorry about that.”

For a second, John just studies Athelstan. It’s not nearly as intimidating as the way Ecbert can seem to look right through you and deep into your psychological flaws, and find them all so familiar they’re not remotely worrying to him, but it’s uncomfortable all the same. Possibly it’s the way Athelstan feels like someone, somewhere, has deeply disappointed John and the man isn’t going to forget it.

Although, oddly, that person doesn’t seem to be Athelstan. “Well, you’re here now, let’s just update the record,” John says. “So you need to have sex soon.”

“I—well, ‘need’ is somewhat overstating it, but…yes, it would be helpful if I could, ah, manage my magic levels,” Athelstan says, willing himself to keep the blushing below five-alarm flames. “I’ve just come off a long flight, and when I’m tired my control gets a little—strained.”

“Okay, that explains the shielding layering,” John mutters, making a note on his laptop. “Going out to the site wasn’t supposed to happen immediately anyway, so we just need to adjust…need to shift that, and Melissa, I think maybe we do a wider perimeter with the police patrols…”

“Oh, absolutely,” says the woman sitting beside John in the booth. “There is no reason why they need to poke into any of this. Athelstan, did you need anything? I know customs can be a real pain about those types of things, and I do have friends at the hospital if you had anything confiscated.”

Athelstan is not entirely sure what she’s referring to. Thankfully, before he has to ask, Melissa’s son—apparently a second resident alpha, though not attached to the Hale pack—tiptoes around the edge of the booth to poke her arm. “Mom, they don’t have to deal with the three-ounce rule,” he hisses. “Private flights.”

“No?” Melissa says, glancing at him. “Well, still, did anybody think about how all that magic might affect things—you remember what happened with the shaving cream—”

“Ah, no, I mean, thank you very much for the offer, but I’m…I brought my own supplies and they’re fine,” Athelstan says, as his face gives up on any restraint on blood flow whatsoever. “Honestly, I think I just need a good rest. That is. Sex, then rest. Ah.”

Something happens over at the booth where all the werewolves are clustered, but by the time Athelstan looks over, Ragnar’s sheepishly straightening his fork tines between his fingers while Lagertha and Laura appear to be in the same staring match as before. Well, at least that’s what Ragnar’s facial expression says. It takes a second, but Athelstan clues in that Ragnar’s staring at the tallest of the local werewolves, who’s rather impressively broad in the shoulders and who is looking back at Ragnar as if he’d like nothing better but to step outside to settle matters.

“We did update all the forms about werewolves,” Athelstan says nervously.

“Oh, whoa, okay,” says John’s son, whose name Athelstan did catch but which he’d like to catch again before being confident about using it. He rapidly sketches some symbols from the Pnakotic Manuscripts in the air, then adjusts seamlessly as Athelstan rather unceremoniously stops distorting reality. “Huh, okay, so this is a lot less reliant on perturbations in the eighth sphere than I was thinking…”

“That would be because of the Tsathoggua influence,” Athelstan says automatically, still mostly watching Ragnar and Lagertha. Neither of them reacted very much at the way the windows temporarily developed tiny wormholes…but then, the local werewolves didn’t either. “It’s extra cross-current on the—”

“Got it, right.” John’s son pulls out a flux regulator attachment, or at least Athelstan guesses that’s the functionality, and attaches it to his phone. He pokes at the screen, then looks up and catches Athelstan’s stare. “Experimental model, but you signed the NDAs.”

Ragnar snorts. “Yes. All thirteen of them.”

“Our lawyer enjoyed the opportunity to practice his _futhark_ ,” Lagertha adds dryly.

John’s son blinks hard. “You…you negotiated the runic sections? Really? Wow, Dad, and you didn’t hear about it from Legal—”

“I didn’t say that,” John says, giving his son a hard look. Then he turns back to Athelstan, but still positioned so that he can take in the werewolves, too. “Yeah, the paperwork looked complete, which I appreciate. So nothing came up on the conflict check, so I think the idea was to just meet and make sure we’re all on the same page on ground rules while people are in town, so we’re all still complying with the Kingsport Edict.”

“It’s a coexistence treaty, I can tell you about it later,” Athelstan says, catching the way Ragnar starts to look at him. “And yes, I think that was the—well, I mean, I’m not—I shouldn’t speak for—”

Lagertha smiles and puts her hand out, as if she’s going to say something, and then Laura Hale sighs loudly. “Yeah, okay, so. Not here to fight?”

“Not here wanting to fight,” Ragnar says, grinning at her. “We can’t help what other people do.”

For a second Laura simply sits there, narrow-eyed, and everyone tenses up. John’s son even starts to get out of his seat, but then Melissa’s son catches his arm and whispers something urgently to him. Laura’s two male relatives look less than pleased about this, but when Ragnar ticks his chin at the whispering and widens his grin, they go back to glaring at him.

“Jesus, try that on someone who didn’t grow up with Peter,” Laura abruptly mutters. She shifts slightly, and from where Athelstan is sitting it just looks like she’s slouching, but Ragnar and Lagertha both look too puzzled for it to be that simple. “Okay, whatever, so, you’re not going to try and date anybody while you’re in town either, are you?”

“What?” Ragnar says, genuinely startled.

“Why would that be important?” Lagertha asks.

“Well, because most of the people who know things are taken, and about half of them are violent, possessive maniacs, and Melissa here gets annoyed when date nights end at her morgue,” Laura says with a shrug. “If you’re not here to fight or to date, then we probably can get through this without any drama. I’m cool with that if you are.”

Ragnar snorts, but he’s clearly still processing Laura’s behavior. Lagertha’s a little quicker, her eyes narrowing before she suddenly straightens and leans forward to put her folded arms on the diner table. “We are not here for drama,” she says coolly.

“Great.” Laura and Lagertha eye each other for another second, and then Laura glances over at Scott. “You got anything?”

“I—no. No, I don’t want any trouble either,” Scott says, a little startled at being put on the spot. He quickly composes himself, but the woman sitting with him—a Miskatonic student but _also_ a hunter, and the daughter of one of the men who’d stayed outside with the University security team to help with clean-up, if Athelstan remembers correctly—doesn’t look happy. “I don’t think the Nemeton does either. It likes werewolves, but it isn’t thrilled when there’s fighting in the preserve and so if we can just all…um, agree to do research, then I think that’d be great.”

“All right, then. If that’s settled, then I’d like you to stay inside for a little longer while we finish recalibrating the wards,” John says. “Maybe fifteen minutes or so, then you can head over to your cabin.”

That’s to him, Athelstan belatedly realizes. “Oh—yes, of course. Ah, would you like any help—I’m sorry about that, they do sort of bury the Tsathoggua references in my file—”

“Yeah, that’d be good,” John says, and matter-of-factly turns his phone around so that Athelstan can see the diagram on it. “Stiles—”

“Yep!” Stiles—apparently that _is_ his name—hops over and plops his phone down on the table. “Okay, so I relayered it and I think this buffers correctly but obviously, it’s not a long-term solve with the telluric undertow, that’s just not acting up right now because of the season but…”

This, Athelstan thankfully has a handle on, and he gratefully digs in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shirley is for Shirley Jackson.
> 
> There's a lot of unintentional comedic (or dramatic, but I tend to get suckered into inappropriate plot jokes) potential in the idea that the Great Old Ones are so indifferent to other life-forms that they also just don't realize when they're intruding in a lot of tense human relationship issues. The Nemeton isn't quite so indifferent, but it also doesn't really get why the werewolves are upset, just that they are and that absolutely no one is paying attention to its Very Important Biological Questions. If you think about it, it's getting most of its of human-werewolf society knowledge from _Quint's_ POV.


	7. Chapter 7

“Well, I suppose that didn’t go nearly as badly as it could have,” Athelstan says later, as he watches Ragnar and Lagertha tote a massive pile of luggage each into the lodging Miskatonic’s secured for them. 

There’s a muffled thud, an annoyed exclamation from Lagertha, and then Ragnar reappears in the doorway, framed by billows of dust on either side of him. He steps back out, sneezing, and then sweeps away the remaining boxes before Athelstan can so much as touch them. “I think it went well,” he proclaims. “We are alive, they are unhappy, that is good.”

Then he turns right back around, just as Athelstan starts to say that might be overdoing it. Athelstan half-thinks about calling after him, then just sighs and turns around for a look at their surroundings.

It’s a pretty location, far enough into the woods that if he doesn’t look down the paved drive, he could almost forget that they’re near a town. The trees aren’t anywhere near as closely-packed as the Norwegian woods had been, so more light filters down and they feel…airier. Less likely to rain down interdimensional tentacular extensions of a Great Old One when you’d rather be preoccupied with personal matters.

“Athelstan,” Lagertha says, and then looks chagrined when he jumps. She puts her hand on his shoulder, pressing lightly on it as he catches his breath, and then speaks a little more slowly. “Athelstan. Do you want to come in? I think the cabin is fine.”

“Oh! Yes, I was just going to, I just…ah…” The end of that thought suddenly eludes him.

Lagertha glances around. “I do not think they followed us,” she says in a considering tone, and then one side of her mouth twists slightly. “I have not looked for magic yet.”

“There are monitoring spells in place, they’re all listed in the…” Athelstan starts to pull his phone out, then thinks the better of it and instead walks into the cabin with her. “There’s always a manual. They should all be listed…here. Oh, and they’ve left an addendum for my special-accommodations requests…oh, wonderful, they _were_ able to address that…”

He's seated himself at a small table and read through five pages before he remembers his company. Wincing, Athelstan looks up, only to find that Ragnar and Lagertha have busied themselves in the galley kitchen.

“Didn’t you eat?” he says.

“Yes. It was good, we should eat there again,” Ragnar says, head deep in the fridge. Then he backs out, holding what appears to be a bag of pasta. “But you ate nothing.”

“You need to eat. You need the calories if we are going to have enough sex to lower your magic,” Lagertha says, not looking at him, her finger wagging more at his shoulder than his face as she roots in the cabinets.

Athelstan opens his mouth, then closes it, deciding that the expedient thing is to let them preoccupy themselves with cooking while his facial extremities finish barbecuing themselves out of embarrassment. Besides, Lagertha’s got a point: he hasn’t eaten since the last in-flight snack an hour before landing, and it’d been another two hours after that, between the final customs and security check and traveling from the airport to Beacon Hills. His blood sugar probably is depleted, and he really should get that back up before attempting anything strenuous.

“Is that worrying?” he says, once the temperature of his cheeks is no longer noticeably elevated. “That they didn’t follow? That doesn’t mean a declaration of war or anything like that, does it?”

Ragnar looks up from where he’s vigorously sauteing some garlic and onions. “No,” he says, a rare unsmiling look of puzzlement on his face. “If they wanted war, we would be fighting. Why do you think they would want that?”

“Oh, I don’t, I just…I don’t have any idea how to read what happened back there, is all,” Athelstan hastily explains. “That is, yes, we walked out alive and they don’t seem to want to come later and start any trouble, but obviously I can’t sense the things you can sense.”

“Do not let them burn, there was only the one,” Lagertha scolds Ragnar. She pushes past him—a glimmer of a smile does flit over his face as she uses a rather tight-looking grip on one buttock to do so—to dump the now-cooked pasta into a colander to drain. She sets the empty pot and colander in the sink, then comes to the table to sit next to Athelstan. “There was nothing extra to sense. What you saw and heard is what happened.”

“Really?” Athelstan says, unable to keep the skepticism out of his voice. Ragnar and Lagertha hardly slept on the flight over, so interested were they in the reams of briefings that Miskatonic kept emailing, so he hadn’t really gotten to touch any of the werewolf reading he’d planned to. But even without that, he’s seen enough of them at this point to know when he’s missing something, if not what he’s missing. “Well, in that case, I did think that you were annoyed.”

Lagertha tips her head a little, amused. Then she shifts from her chair to Athelstan’s, tucking herself into his side as he swallows hard at the sudden application of warmth. “Did you?”

“She was annoyed,” Ragnar mutters, and then pretends to be busy with olive oil and a jar of capers when Lagertha looks over.

“Their alpha,” Athelstan goes on, finding a bit of bravery from somewhere. “You kept moving your head whenever they moved.”

“Laura Hale is very…interested in thinking that she is aggressive,” Lagertha says after a moment. She purses her lips. “She is young, but I am surprised. She is a born werewolf, raised by a born werewolf. For that, she should be old enough to know that you cannot show strength only by your snarl.”

Athelstan nods. “I did see that—she did annoy you too,” he says, then hesitates when Lagertha looks sharply at him. “I actually…I meant the other one. What was his name…”

“Scott,” Lagertha says. She leans back from him and twists so that they’re looking at each other. “The one with the Emissary—no, you called it the—”

“The semi-symbiotic mammalian mutual service partner, but that’s a mouthful and I rather like the Emissary idea,” Athelstan says. “It gets the same concepts across in much less words.”

Lagertha blinks, surprised—and pleased, he thinks. Then she sobers. “He does not annoy me.”

“He doesn’t?” Athelstan says.

“No,” she says, but she draws out the word in a way he’s coming to understand means she has a lot of thoughts on the subject she’s not disclosing. She seems to realize he senses something, because then she cocks her head. “I was looking at Laura. She is the senior alpha, and the one with the pack.”

“Yes, and they both looked rather serious. Her pack members, I mean,” Athelstan says.

Ragnar lets out an amused noise. “You mean they looked very threatening. That is nothing to worry about, that is what we werewolves do at meetings. When you were not looking, they were paying more attention to the one—he has the interesting name. Stiles?”

“And neither them nor Laura were paying any attention to this Scott,” Lagertha says. She and Ragnar look at each other, so that it’s clear that however entertained Ragnar is, they both agree on this point. “That is strange to me. He is an alpha, even if he is junior, and he does not bring any werewolves _with_ , even ones who do not pay attention, and he is close to the Emissary for this Nemeton.”

“So you’re most worried about him, is what you’re saying?” Athelstan says, feeling a little relieved. Admittedly he doesn’t know the man, but the Miskatonic briefing had very strongly stressed Scott McCall’s peacemaking bent. “Well, his mother was there, and I’m supposed to meet with her and with John Stilinski tomorrow to go over the revisions to the security plan. I can ask after him if you want.”

Oddly, both Ragnar and Lagertha seem less than enthused by this. Lagertha even draws in her breath as if she regrets disclosing her worry in the first place. Then she smiles—a little effort goes into it, though it’s sincere—and puts her hand on Athelstan’s arm.

“I do not think that is needed. He did not threaten us—”

“He was looking after his mother,” Ragnar mutters, as he flips the contents of the pan into the air. He casually tilts the pan from side to side, catching everything without a splatter, and then reaches into the sink for the pasta, flipping that into the pan in the same smooth movement. “And the…squirrel. Emissary.”

“—and it is only strange,” Lagertha says, after a glance at him. Then she turns back to Athelstan. “But we are not here for land, or for fighting. We are here so you can speak to the Nemeton, so it can…have children.”

Athelstan detects at least one question in Lagertha’s tone and the researcher in him seizes onto it. “That might not be what it literally means. You find that often with entities that gain sentience without drawing on a human cause, they don’t quite translate their concepts once they’ve figured out how to use our language.”

“Which is interesting,” Lagertha says, looking genuinely warm about it. “This is what you meant when you were telling us about—” she slows her speech in favor of proper pronunciation, down to the rather accurate English accent “—‘pseudo-mimicry of human concepts when they advance in intellect complexity,’ is it not?”

It is, actually, and Athelstan spends a solid few minutes picking up that line of thought, while Ragnar slides a dish in front of him and then sprawls into a nearby chair, idly gazing out a window. Then, halfway through a mouthful of pasta, Athelstan recalls himself. 

“But really, are you bothered by them?” he asks.

“Them?” Ragnar says, not looking over or moving. “Why? They do not have anything we want.”

“But you’re watching for something,” Athelstan points out. Rather muddled, given his mouthful; he gives up and washes it down with the…coffee Lagertha at some point got him. Then looks back up at the two of them. “You didn’t really agree that things were settled either, you just let Miskatonic’s head of security say so.”

Ragnar and Lagertha both are still, as they tend to when they’ve been detected at something and haven’t quite made up their mind whether they’re going to be confrontational about it. Lagertha’s hand moves on Athelstan’s arm and he moves it away before he thinks about it.

He wasn’t trying to avoid her, actually. He just…had the sense she was going to soothe him again, and that’s not really what he’s asking. He still feels a little guilty about it, glancing down and then up, but before he can apologize, he catches that she’s not looking at him as if she’s offended, but rather, just studying him.

“We are not going to fight,” Ragnar says, a bit abruptly. He lifts one leg and puts his foot against the table leg, then pushes himself out a few centimeters. That’s far enough for him to stretch his arm out and flick at the curtains of the window he’d been gazing through. He shuts them, and then drops his foot and scoots back to the table. He gives Athelstan a smile that’s less sheepish and more…thoughtful, but on the wary side of that. “I do not think so, at least. But I think they are being…very concerned about the Nemeton.”

“I was asked here because of its behavior,” Athelstan says. A little uncertainly, since he can tell that Ragnar’s not simply making an observation.

Ragnar drops a shoulder as if he’s wincing, but his eyes don’t narrow. They stay wide and on Athelstan. “Yes. I think they are making a lot of—a lot of attention about it, and then—”

“There is something else,” Lagertha finishes. She tucks a hair behind her ear, and then deliberately rests two fingers on the back of Athelstan’s wrists. “Something they are busy with, which is not the Nemeton. But I do not know if we care, when all you want to know about is the Nemeton.”

It’s another question which is not quite a question, Athelstan thinks. “I think so,” he says after a moment. He does wince. “That is, I don’t think I can spend my entire sabbatical being kicked out of places for too many Cthulhic intrusions, even if Ecbert seems to think I’ll be worth it once I’m on the faculty roster.”

“Then I don’t think we care,” Ragnar shrugs. “We might just…watch. But not to do anything.”

“And you must eat,” Lagertha says, her fingertips pressing into Athelstan’s wrist. Not hard, but enough to draw attention to them. When he looks back up at her, she’s composed her expression into an encouraging one. “You are hungry, and if you are going to talk to them later, this does not help.”

No, it doesn’t, but they’re being a little cagey. On the other hand, Athelstan doesn’t honestly want to have an argument right now. And anyway, he doesn’t know enough to. They have said they won’t do anything, and if they’re where he can see them, then he’d know if there was going to be a fight, and…he should be practical. So he dips his fork back into the pasta.

He will be talking to the Miskatonic team later, after all.

* * *

“It’s not really that out of spec,” Stiles’ dad says once Athelstan and his Norwegian werewolves are out of sight. “Now that we have the background to make sense of those files Brichester sent over, the team can deal with it.”

Stiles sighs. “Dad, look, if you want me to beat it, you can just say.”

For a second his father has an exasperated expression like pretty much every other not-according-to-plan Security snafu they’ve ever encountered. But then the man thumbs at his phone and slides it into his pocket, and fully turns to face Stiles. “Kid, I’m saying, I have a fully-trained and competent team to deal with things like resetting protective wards and adjusting security controls. So that part’s fine.”

“Oh… _oh_ ,” Stiles says. “So the _other_ part, where you’re like, son, did you just see the same wildly inconclusive werewolf interactions that I saw, and I’m all, yep, but hey, you’re dating the mother of one and the scion of a family formerly dedicated to tracking them back to pre-Enlightenment times and you _still_ look like you want to call in the big guns…that part? We’re really talking about that part?”

“Stiles, don’t talk about yourself in the third person, you know that’s a screening trigger,” his dad says.

“First of all, I’m not, I would _never_ refer to myself as ‘the big guns,’ because I was born a couple decades after the eighties,” Stiles says, plopping himself onto the bumper of his father’s SUV. “Also, you know and I know that if ballistics-based technology could handle eldritch curvature space, Miskatonic wouldn’t go into panic mode whenever one of the hunter families gets hold of a bastardized copy of the _Necronomicon_. And third—”

“Are you worried?” his dad asks.

Stiles moves his mouth a bit, because the third reason why his dad’s sarcasm has no legs is, in his opinion, pretty amazing in how it works in that Bruce Campbell reference, and he is sincerely disappointed in not being able to get it out there for the world to appreciate. But his father looks serious, and at the end of the day they both prioritize survival and sanity over proving how smart they are (hence his dad’s team’s three hundred and twenty-seven percent increase in retention rate), so…yeah, okay. He stops and thinks.

“I’m kind of weirded out, but I don’t know that I’d say I’m worried,” he finally says. “I mean, Peter was on the quiet side, but that wasn’t really fight posturing back there. I…I want to say they were confused? But also, haven’t asked yet. You?”

“Kind of the same,” his father manages, after a couple moments where he makes like he might just lean into the whole Head of Security, must secure, thing and excuse himself. He rubs at the side of his face, looking past Stiles into the diner parking lot. “Well, they’re still hanging around—wait, looks like Laura might be taking off.”

Stiles turns around and yeah, she’s stepping away from Derek and Peter, who both look like this has not been the most enjoyable afternoon of their lives, but who also don’t look like they do when somebody’s threatening them. Actually, Derek seems like he gets a one-liner off at Laura that Peter genuinely appreciates, judging from the tiny smile of approval on his face. And Laura is moving in a _less_ tense way than before…right up to when Scott, donning his determined face, steps up next to her. He’s apparently riding along.

“Sans Allison?” Stiles observes.

“Yeah, Chris and her want to go check in on the police,” Stiles’ dad says, gesturing to where the Argents are standing across the lot, both of them on the phone. “Melissa’s not going. She told me it’s just tightening up that they’re going to keep out of the University-marked areas, but usually when they’re trying to be at least a _little_ diplomatic, she goes.”

“Well, honestly, if they’re finally that fed up with the sheriff, can you blame them? I mean, you saw that email he sent her about the vampires, right? Murderous undead outbreak and you wanna complain about new graveyards lowering property values?” Stiles says.

Stiles’ dad makes a face that says yes, he did see that email, and he did think really long and hard about respecting Melissa’s wishes to just leave that problem to her and not, say, some off-duty Miskatonic staff with access to psychogenic teleportation drugs. Then he sighs and turns back to Stiles. “I think it’s this hunter they can’t run off. He went and registered for local bird hunting, and then he dropped that he’s part of some kind of local mushroom-gathering meet-up to one of the deputies.”

“Huh,” Stiles says. “It’s like he thought about leaving a trail for somebody to find him if he went missing.”

“Yeah, so they’re all trying to get rid of him and do it without a big blow-up, and having a guy around who can singlehandedly link dimensions when he’s not getting laid is going to make that harder,” Stiles’ dad says. “So if the werewolves aren’t going to make it a problem, that would be nice.”

“It actually didn’t seem like any of them wanted to, just that nobody wanted to be the first one to admit it,” Stiles points out. “Which, look, I was going to follow up on. If there actually was some kind of secret arranging of shifter throwdowns later on, I’ll let you know.”

“Email or text?” Stiles’ dad says, the corner of his mouth quirking up.

So he’s not _that_ worried. Stiles rolls his eyes and tells his dad he’ll follow the usual escalation protocols, and then trots out of the diner to go collect his boyfriends and get their take on it.

“Lunch is off,” Derek says when he gets close enough. “Laura says she wants to have a pack meet and make sure people know what to expect.”

If things had gone well, the plan had been for a Hale family meal-time at a local Korean BBQ place, so they could get all of the temper-straining activities out of the way on the same day. “Okay,” Stiles says, trying to reassess the man’s mood. “So are we rescheduling or do you just get to dodge Cora?”

Derek snorts, and slides in a little closer to Stiles than he normally would as the two of them go towards his car, where Peter is looking up something on his phone. “Hopefully last night was it, but Scott and Laura were arguing about whether he should get involved again. So somebody’s probably going to show up and want to drag me out to complain about other people.”

“I can’t imagine why, it’s not as if that scowl of yours is particularly encouraging of personal confessions,” Peter says absently. He finishes up on his phone, then swings his body around to briefly press up against Stiles. “It seems as if our honored guests are going straight to their cabin.”

Stiles frowns. “Well…yeah, they’ve got a driver. Look, before we—how bad was that, seriously? Did they insult something or somebody? Do Dad and I need to dig into the security manual for adjacent shifter activities?”

Peter raises his eyebrows. “I thought we talked about this,” he says. “Did someone—”

“Yeah, you said you weren’t going to mess anything up for me,” Stiles says, stepping in so he can put his hand on Peter’s side. His thumb isn’t quite on Peter’s stomach but it’s close enough that Peter’s lips twitch. “And I’m just saying, again, werewolves aren’t eldritch, so Miskatonic’s official policy is we don’t get into it. And that’s not saying they’re going to enforce neutrality, the university isn’t like the United Nations of the supernatural. It’s just saying if it doesn’t involve our resources and doesn’t open up one of Yog-Sothoth’s gates, they’re hands-off.”

“I appreciate that, Stiles,” Peter says, with a clear, honest, and unusually somber gaze on Stiles. He pauses and it doesn’t seem to be for dramatic effect, but just so he can collect his thoughts. “But on the other hand, I’d be very foolish to not notice that killing two werewolves who are necessary for keeping your guest scholar’s abilities under control _would_ probably raise the likelihood of a Yog-Sothoth visitation.”

“Besides, nobody wants to kill anyone,” Derek says, and then looks annoyed when both of them stare at him. “Look, I don’t _want_ to kill people, I just don’t mind doing it if they’re about to kill me or you. And anyway they weren’t that bad. Just…”

He looks at Peter, who spares a moment to be exasperated at the passing of the baton. Then Peter sighs, and leans into Stiles’ hand. “I do agree with Derek. I honestly don’t think they’re interested in a fight.”

“Okay, well, then…” Stiles’ enthusiasm levels fall as he catches Peter’s eyes almost flicking away from him; he puts both hands on Peter’s waist, and then, when that pleased look comes over Peter’s face, pulls just back from the man’s dipping head “…what are they interested in, and what kind of problem is it?”

Peter goes still.

“They don’t seem that big on the Nemeton, judging from the way they reacted to Quint and yeah, before you say, I was actually paying attention to that, in between listening to Athelstan and oh, please tell me that’s not it,” Stiles says, pushing his fingers firmly into Peter’s back-pockets. “Look, I realize I got all geeky back there but that was _not_ my fan-face, for the record. I have to know what’s going to perturb the underpinnings of our reality but you _know_ Tsathoggua is not my favorite Great Old One, no matter how much I ramble on about fluidic psycho-dimensional effects.”

“What?” Derek says. “Wait, what, you’re jealous of that skinny English guy?”

“No,” Peter says irritably to him, snapping out of all those mental calculations about what can be said and not said that will maintain happy times with Stiles. Then he catches himself. His voice softens as he looks at Stiles. “No, of course I know when you’re obsessing over a person as opposed to their knowledge. Besides, while he does have some impressive lift in his hair, he is rather…lacking in certain assets you seem to appreciate.”

As he backs up that ass into Stiles’ fingers. Stiles…caves and gives Peter the grope he wants, because that’s what you do in a relationship, you do nice little things for your partner every so often. Then he takes his hands out of the pockets and ignores the tiny disappointed noise Peter makes, because also, when you’re in a relationship you shouldn’t duck the serious conversations. “Okay, right, so you’re not thinking I’m looking to jump Athelstan, even in the purely intellectual love of knowledge sense, and you agree they really don’t seem to be interested in horning in or cozying up to the Nemeton…”

“That was actually pretty funny,” Derek inserts. “I’d be okay with Quint splitting up if I can just see that expression on their faces again.”

Which is a major admission from Derek, enough so that Stiles has to turn—he keeps a hand on Peter, so _that_ source of jealousy doesn’t rear its head—and look at him. “Then what are you two thinking? I mean, I’m genuinely not seeing it. And I’m not asking because I’m checking that you’re not going to mess things up, I know you’re not going to try to do that, I’m just—I’m just really curious now. I thought I was getting the hang of werewolves, but all I’m getting here is that you’re confusing each other.”

“Well, that would be what’s going on,” Peter says. He smirks a little at getting Stiles’ attention back, but mostly he’s thoughtful. “I can’t tell what they want. I don’t think they’re actually interested in the Nemeton itself, and they can’t possibly be here just because this Athelstan needs partners for sex.”

“I don’t know, I think that could be an answer,” Derek mutters, his nose wrinkling. “It wasn’t exactly like when Scott and Allison first got together, but it was…Laura wanted me to ask you if they stocked that cabin they’re putting them up in with enough cleaner.”

“With Athelstan’s clearance level, he’d bring his cleaning formulas _with_ him,” Stiles says.

“I know, I told her that, she just stared at me like I wasn’t talking in English,” Derek says, annoyed. Then he shrugs dismissively and digs his keys out of his coat. “Look, I think…even if we don’t have it figured out, it’s not feeling like something that will kill us if we don’t. And I know, Peter, I end up in a lot of situations where we should have, but I was never the one saying we needed to _stop_ working on those.”

“And you’re not saying that now,” Peter says mildly. He gets his moment when Derek looks up, startled, and he gets to pull out his first-churning-of-the-morning cream smile. He holds it till Derek rolls his eyes and starts to walk around to the driver’s side of the car, then lets the smile settle into something more genuine. “Possibly we’re just being paranoid. They may actually not have any ulterior agenda.”

Once Derek’s clicked the locks off, Peter pulls open the back door and stands away to let Stiles go in first. He does that less to be polite and more so he can control how closely Stiles gets crowded into the other, still-shut door, but hey, look, at this point Stiles finds those little tics endearing and doesn’t care who judges (besides, the Miskatonic definition of dangerous psychopathy downranks possessive behavior linked to humans, since at least you’re still invested in the continued existence of humanity).

“Yeah, well, doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out. I mean, Dad’s not gonna have anyone lurk in the bushes around their cabin, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t upping the scans for unplanned space-time fluctuations,” Stiles says, allowing for Peter’s hand on his thigh as he buckles in. “Anyway, you’ve all met now, so if you don’t have to, we don’t have to go to any more meetings. I can just email Athelstan my other questions about—”

“We don’t have to go out of our way to be antisocial,” Peter says, leaning out to pull the door shut. “Besides, even if they’re not here to take over, they shouldn’t be given the impression that that concerns us. If we’re avoiding them, that could be taken as a sign of weakness.”

“So…they could be up to absolutely nothing, which is a new thing for you so you don’t know how to play it, so you wanna play it like they’re up to something,” Stiles says before he can help himself.

Peter, being Peter, lounges back in the seat and tips his head ever-so-slightly so that Stiles can see how amused he is (because being in a relationship _also_ means you know what you have, and he knows he’s got a sarcastic mouthy nerd with a penchant for antediluvian magical practices and applying Armitage’s Razor whenever possible). “To be on the safe side.”

“You know what, you’re right,” Stiles says, pulling his phone out. “Poor Athelstan’s gonna get a totally wrong impression of us from earlier. I’m gonna see if he has dinner plans.”

“Is he going to stop flexing reality by then?” Derek asks from the front. “Neither of you think it might be a bad idea to interrupt him in the middle of—”

“Okay, I’ll _email_ him, I won’t text him,” Stiles says, sighing, as he switches over to the other app. “Besides, dinner’s almost ten hours from now. Even _we_ don’t go that long, and if I heard him right, he’s just talking about sexual energy as a conduit, not about actual bodily modifications.”

“Fine, whatever. I just don’t want tentacles ripping things up because we cockblocked someone,” Derek says. 

“On it,” Stiles says. “Just let me handle this one, okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiles' _Evil Dead_ joke was going to be something along the lines of preferring 'boomstick' over 'big guns' anyway, if they have to go back to the eighties.
> 
> Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories went weirdly into the SF realm at times, with medieval sorcerers invoking Lovecraftian deities in order to create potions that allowed you to time-travel. Stiles is referring to those with the drugs, since at least one Averoigne story had a plot around tricking an enemy into getting sent back in time.
> 
> Armitage's Razor is something that, so far as I know, I came up with, and it essentially says that you should never assume something is due to Cthulhic aliens when actually it's because of a _person_ (who just happens to be trying to use Cthulhic aliens for their agenda).


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles also emails his father, with his update per Peter and Derek included in the short-form incident report, which checks two things off the to-do list. He hasn’t forgotten about Scott either and sends his buddy a text to see if the hunter situation could use any help.

_Sorry, no, it’s just a lot of talking with everybody so they’re really clear on what not to do,_ Scott texts back. _But if you’re anywhere near the high school, could you go pick up Allison? She needs a ride._

“Why is she out here?” Derek grumbles as they pull up to the school (Peter opted to stay in the rental and check a couple research points on Athelstan for Stiles). “I thought she and her dad were headed over to the police station.”

“Well…” Stiles says, and then they both see the police cruiser parked by the front door. “Maybe they decided to not have a highly sensitive conversation where any random jogger with a cellphone snatch to report could drop by?”

Derek doesn’t answer, because Derek is parking the car, even though they’re barely inside the lot, and getting the door open so that he can inhale deeply. He doesn’t exactly have a loading bar plastered over him, but he’s clearly in detection mode so Stiles shuts up and clambers out the other side and does a couple quick phone-scans on his end.

Nothing comes up, which is a good thing since while it’s past class-time, he can see at least two sports teams practicing in the fields to the left, and there are people moving past the windows inside of the school. He also can see somebody in a police uniform up at the door, moving their arms like they’re talking to someone just inside. He puts his phone on camera mode and zooms in a bit. “Oh, okay, it’s Tara. That’s a good sign, right? She’s one of the good ones.”

“I don’t see Allison,” Derek mutters. He turns slowly around, then focuses on something or someone in one of the fields. His lips are moving—oh, he’s doing the werewolf whisper phone (as Erica once called it and now Stiles cannot get that out of his head). Then they stop and he listens for a few seconds. “Oh. Yeah, it’s Tara.”

“And I take it that I don’t need to flip over to taser mode, given the lack of neck-cracking,” Stiles says, foregoing the I-just-said-that, as the supportive boyfriend he is.

“She got called by a teacher because they thought somebody had broken into the basement, and Allison rode along,” Derek says, reassured enough that he starts off across the parking lot. “They think it was the hunter they’re trying to chase down.”

The high school basement, per pretty much everyone, is a must-see on the Beacon Hills Murder Rampage Whistle-Stop Tour, so Stiles ducks back into the car and grabs his bookbag. Then he hustles back up to Derek’s side, just in time to watch him ignore some teenage girls desperately trying to strut into his field of vision.

“I don’t crack my neck before every fight,” Derek says.

He’s still got his default scowl on, but he did break pace just for a second to let Stiles catch up, which Stiles reads as an attempt to make casual conversation (which is still defensive, but when you get to know him, you realize Derek has shades of defense, just like his grunts contain multitudes). “You do when you think you’re really going to have to get into it. You don’t when you think you’re just going to smack them around and check your coat for scuffs later. It’s just like how Peter ratchets his one-liners from poshified ‘your mama’ to Hannibal Lector levels, depending on whether he’s planning on a takedown or on a full-on obliteration campaign.”

Derek actually cracks a smile. It only lasts for less than one step, but it was there and Stiles saw enough to validate. “Maria said the guy already left so they’re just trying to figure out what he was looking for.”

“Maria?” Stiles says.

“Some junior that got wolfed and Laura’s mentoring her,” Derek says, nodding back at the fields. “Soccer.”

“Oh, huh, that must annoy Finstock,” Stiles says. “I think the other recent newbie went for soccer too, right?”

Derek rolls his eyes, and then they’re spotted: Allison comes out of the school and steps around Tara, waving at them. She wouldn’t do that if she was having some sort of cover-up or other argument with Tara, so Stiles puts his phone away and waves back.

“Scott said you needed a ride?” he calls.

“Yeah, mine’s still waiting on a new axle and Dad needs his,” she says. “Tara’s got to go back to the station and butter up the sheriff so he doesn’t butt in.”

“Why the hell anyone would want to when we’re talking about tentacles is beyond me. I’m fine with letting the specialists handle it,” Tara mutters. She starts to step back, then pauses to level a stern look at Allison, who blinks in surprise. “That said, it’s all a waste of my time if we come back here for interviews and everything’s sparkling new. You let McCall know she needs to _wait_ before she starts in on clean-up.”

Allison smiles tightly, just nodding, and Tara adds on a slightly friendlier goodbye before trotting down the steps. She and Derek exchange a not-hostile set of glances (not exactly affectionate either, but hey, Stiles is happy without competition) and then she gets into her car to go.

“What was it, the old student records?” Derek asks as soon as Tara’s car is moving.

“No, actually, I think it was the gardening supplies,” Allison says, a little curtly. Then she grimaces and pushes some hair out of her face. “Sorry. Tara’s annoyed about something Scott’s mom did last night, and I don’t have the details but she kept at me like I’m supposed to know them, and…anyway. I think they were in the janitor’s stuff.”

“Should I be flashbacking to my first week here?” Stiles says.

“Well, the janitor’s over trimming those hedges, not in the psych ward,” Allison says with a teasing smile, which is a little more like her usual self. “Seriously? I’m not…it doesn’t _feel_ Cthulhic, really. They’re mostly doing standard hunter stuff, dropping in on Dr. Deaton and sneaking after some of the younger pack members and things like that. I don’t know how the gardening supplies fit in yet but…it’s just not screaming insanity brought on by the vastness of alien horror.”

Stiles can’t help grinning back, because she’s really starting to sound like a proper Miskatonic alum and she’s not even through her first year. The Admissions Office has pretty dubious taste (they _could_ rule out some of the legacies and still keep up their endowment, they just think that certain family lineages are necessary to maintain the ‘spirit’ of the institution, even if said spirit is inbred and racist and patriarchal and just plain snooty), but they did good in recruiting her.

“Subtlety isn’t exactly a key characteristic, so if you’re not getting it right away, it’s probably not,” he says. “I’m not getting anything on my phone either.”

“Yeah, it’s probably just…I don’t know, some elaborate ambush they’re trying to set up. It is sort of near where they keep the spare soccer balls,” Allison says, shrugging. “Anyway, we know who it was, and I already told Laura so the pack should stay away, so there’s not really much else to do here. What are you two doing? I thought you’d be still talking to Athelstan about magic.”

“He’s busy depowering himself,” Stiles says, and is highly amused when Allison blushes a little, despite how handsy she and Scott get. “But I _did_ just invite him to dinner, since now that the alpha posturing’s over, I figure we can have an actual conversation about Cthulhic Studies.”

“Oh, really? Did he say yes?” Allison asks.

“Yeah, he did, I’m just trying to figure out where to meet up now,” Stiles says. “I mean, normally if I was gonna convince somebody I _do_ know how to act like a human being, I’d leverage Scott’s mom’s cooking, but I don’t want to put her—”

“Scott and I can cook,” Allison says. Then looks tolerant when Stiles stammers something about not wanting to impose. “I don’t know if you were thinking a restaurant, but we already used the diner and I don’t know that anywhere else is shielded enough. And anyway, I’d like to hear what he thinks about what the Nemeton said out there. So we’d be happy to.”

* * *

“I realize I probably should’ve consulted you first, but she was—was doing that weaponized niceness thing, you know, where she’s offering even though she and Scott are running around holding down the murder rate, and I blanked,” Stiles confesses later, once he and Derek have rejoined Peter at Stiles’ dad’s rental house. “I blanked. I did. My vaunted powers of excuse-making failed me, and I said yes.”

“Stiles, you know perfectly well that you’re not obligated to get me out of telling the Argents we’re not available every time,” Peter says, without skipping a beat in his attempt to get Stiles’ pants off. “For that matter, you _know_ how much I enjoy doing that.”

Peter’s hands are making a very persuasive argument, Stiles isn’t going to lie, but also, Peter was logged into Miskatonic’s portal when they walked in and his laptop is still within Stiles’ sightline, even if it’s turned so Stiles can’t see more than the faint yellow tendrils curling around the screen. “Yeah, I do, but it’s one thing if you’re notching up another round in your and Chris’ eternal pissing contest and another thing if you’re doing it to Allison, who you know is just gonna tell Scott,” Stiles says, trying to keep his eyes on Peter while still having enough peripheral vision to figure out if those tendrils are library or security or some other department. “And then it’s gonna get to me, and—”

“You really need to do something about your susceptibility to his facial expressions,” Peter sighs. His hands go still, but he’s slumping over so that his breath is tucking into the curve of Stiles’ throat, ticklish and just warm enough that Stiles instinctively crooks towards it. “It’s not even a very _good_ puppydog face. Derek when he was a toddler got us out of far more police stops than McCall ever has.”

“Wait, what?” Derek says, looking up from his end of the couch. “Why don’t I remember this? Did you or Mom make me not remember?”

“Far more likely that it was the sugar rush from those damn fudgsicles you always wanted,” Peter says, glancing over his shoulder.

As tempted as Stiles is to check Derek’s expression (okay, so…the incest thing, it’s there, and usually that’s all it does because there’s incest and then there’s incest that results in degenerate subterranean cannibal fodder, but sometimes Derek can get kind of hilariously resentful about Peter’s Derek-as-a-baby stories), knowledge calls and so instead he checks Peter’s laptop, putting his hand out really quick to twist it towards him. Not the library portal, definitely Security, but Peter has another window open in front of it that keeps Stiles from seeing exactly what the man’s looking up.

Then the window disappears, and Stiles guiltily turns back to find Peter, propped on one elbow with his other arm extended to the keyboard, studying him. “Um, so, it’s not like you aren’t still hot.”

“Well, he didn’t have time to change his shirt,” Derek, now sagging into the couch as he texts somebody, says.

“Thank you, Derek, for the startling insight,” Peter says dryly, though not quite as biting as he can be. His eyes flick over Stiles’ face, and then he starts to push himself up. “I suppose there really aren’t many other choices, if we want to keep the morgue free, and in the grand scheme of…things…”

Stiles feels no shame in having his hands halfway into Peter’s v-neck. If the man’s going to wear it cut that low, then Stiles is going to treat it as the half-open doorway it is, because those pecs _are_ his to admire. “You can plot and make out at the same time.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Peter says, one brow ticked up, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He shifts his weight, getting comfortable, and one of his hands finds its way up the hem of Stiles’ shirt. “I thought you were planning a nice collegial dinner with a visiting scholar, to reinforce that this is, in fact, an _educational_ opportunity.”

“Shit,” Derek says sharply. Then twitches his shoulders in without looking up when they look at him. “Laura bet me you were going to hold the sex ed jokes till we met up tomorrow.”

Peter just restrains himself from an eye-roll. Just. “At any rate,” he says, turning back to Stiles. “Having Allison host isn’t a bad idea. The Lothbroks might say they don’t know the Argents, but they were certainly keeping tabs on her and Chris as if they think the two deserve careful handling. That should check any tendencies towards unnecessary aggression.”

“Laura says she can’t come,” Derek says.

“I, um, I wasn’t thinking she would?” Stiles says, and then rapidly reviews all relevant conversations. Damn it, he hadn’t asked. “Sorry, is this a—”

“What? No, I just—I told her, because she’d want to know. I didn’t invite her, but she said she can’t come anyway,” Derek says, voice rising a little.

Peter looks annoyed, but stops when Stiles tugs at his shirt-collar; Stiles is pretty sure that that’s Derek’s caught-out snarl and not his angry one, and he doesn’t want this to devolve into one of Peter and Derek’s arguments about how much to tell Laura. “Okay,” Stiles says. “But anyway, back to the part where you think we’re gonna keep from a table-side beatdown because you’re both going to be side-eyeing Allison.”

“Did I say that?” Peter says, with one of those deceptively mild expressions on his face.

“Well, if you’re not, is it really a neutral location?” Stiles points out. And then wishes he hadn’t, because that’s another angle he probably should’ve thought of before accepting Allison’s offer. “Look, I can just tell her.”

“Stiles,” Peter says. He doesn’t raise his voice but he does sort of make it an empathetic particle, rather than just the start of a sentence. Then he shifts his weight again, moving back so that he’s about as level with Stiles’ head as he can get in his position. “Stiles. This doesn’t have to be anything more than dinner.”

“Are you saying that with a straight face?” Stiles says. Then grimaces. “Wait, you are. Look, I know, I know, you don’t want to step on my life, but at the same time, I gotta point out, this is _all_ werewolf stuff and I am dating a werewolf—two werewolves—and I’m not gonna deny—”

“Stiles, it’s a dinner with other werewolves,” Peter says, now raising his voice. “But also, we’re people and we can agree that this has nothing to do with werewolves.”

“He’s not going to buy that, he _is_ dating us,” Derek says. Then, looking at Stiles and not at the glare Peter is now giving him, Derek pockets his phone and pushes himself up into an actual sitting position. “Look, if they’re assholes, we might pick it up after dinner. But if they’re just there to watch you and Athelstan talk about eldritch horror spells, then they can just be there, same as me and Peter. We can find something else to fight about, it doesn’t have to be you.”

“Weirdly, I find that reassuring,” Stiles says after a moment. “No, really, that sounds…that sounds doable. And like real you, not play-nice-for-Stiles you.”

Derek snorts. “It is me. Just as long as Allison isn’t using anything from those CSA boxes the ghouls ship them, I’m fine with it.”

“Much as it pains me to say it, that also accurately describes my feelings,” Peter says.

He looks a little less pained when Stiles reaches up and curls one hand over the back of his neck. Peter’s mouth quirks, and then he lets Stiles pull him back down.

“The intent _is_ not to fight,” he says, right before Stiles is about to lay one on him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, but also, I don’t want to…hamstring you when it might be a problem,” Stiles says. He slides his fingers back and forth across the bumps of Peter’s spine, watching how Peter’s eyes soften. “You know that.”

“I do,” Peter agrees. He dips, pauses again like he’s going to say something else, but then just kisses Stiles.

So. Dinner it is.

* * *

“Did we not fill out their questionnaire?” Lagertha asks with a frown. “I remember you asking these questions.”

“No, we did, but I just…thought since we actually are having dinner with them, you might want to mention any other dietary preferences?” Athelstan explains, a bit lamely. He’d been so relieved to receive Stiles’ dinner invitation—they _weren’t_ going to be ostracized from the local academic community—that he’d briefly forgotten he wasn’t traveling on his own anymore. And that there is an entire additional culture he probably should be thinking of before he commits to social plans. “Ah, meat preferences?”

Ragnar rolls his eyes as he and Lagertha poke around the back of the cabin. Once they’d assured themselves Athelstan was actually going to finish the food they’d prepared, they’d resumed unpacking and exploring. Lagertha has charge of the cabin’s manual and as she reads out information about security sensors and other amenities, Ragnar physically verifies. “Are they that careful about what they eat here?” he mutters.

“I think they’re just asking what you’d like,” Athelstan says, doing his best to avoid sounding reproachful. A soft ping makes him look down and he reads the new text. “Oh, also, the one who’s cooking is actually the hereditary…what was her name, Alana?”

“Allison,” Lagertha says, turning one page.

She’s looking at Athelstan, not the book. He flushes and checks the text again. “Yes, well, she apparently hunts game as well as, er…anyway, she’s asking because she has a well-stocked freezer, and would be more than happy to pull something out of it if you want to try the, ah, the local…is that rude?”

Ragnar and Lagertha both turn to look at him. “Rude?” they echo, sounding slightly confused.

“Well, assuming you’d prefer wild over domestic, because you’re…” Athelstan waves his hand.

“She is with that other alpha, isn’t she?” Ragnar asks Lagertha. “The one with the squirrel. He smelled like hamburger.”

“I suppose it could be a little… _rude_ to think that we are not from here, and so we would like wild better,” Lagertha says after a moment’s deliberation. She tilts her head at Ragnar. “But we do also very much like deer.”

Ragnar grins at her. “This is true,” he says, before ducking back down to peer at a space heater in one of the closets. “If she has deer, I will eat it.”

“You can tell her we would like deer,” Lagertha says. Then she pauses. “Is it rude if we do not bring something?”

“Oh, er—like a bottle of wine?” Athelstan says. “Well, I don’t know, but I doubt they’re that different over here, and—if this means things between werewolves, I do have an expense account.”

“Maybe we should check the local pack guidelines,” Ragnar says, backing out of the closet. It’s hard to tell whether he’s being serious or facetious, but then he pivots to one of his and Lagertha’s duffel bags. He takes an ax out, looks at it, puts it back in, and takes out another one. “We do not need to stay here till dinner, do we?”

Is he…thinking they’re going to bring an ax as a gift? Athelstan starts to stammer that that might be easily misconstrued, then stops himself as something else occurs to him. “Well, no, but…I did say I was going to, ah, relieve myself before we went out again. So they don’t have to worry about me reconfiguring things everywhere I go.”

“You have not done that yet, and we have traveled all the way from Norway,” Lagertha points out. She puts the book down, deliberately stepping in front of a suddenly-eager Ragnar, and then walks up to put her hands on Athelstan’s upper arms. “I do not think you will try to hurt anyone.”

“Well, no, I’m not going to _try_ , but…I should just have sex,” Athelstan mutters.

Lagertha lifts one arm to elbow behind her; she doesn’t actually seem to connect with Ragnar, but she’s forceful enough about it that he retreats, looking puzzled. “If you think it would help, then of course,” she says. “But…I would like you to want to have it.”

“Oh… _oh_ , I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like…that is…it’s not…” _You_ , he almost says. But while that is true, he’s also not doing a fantastic job of making it sound as if it isn’t just something he’s doing to get out of the way, and that’s not fair to her either.

Or accurate, if he’s honest. He presses his lips together, trying to think of how to actually put that so he doesn’t sound like a complete ass, and Lagertha simply smiles at him. Not mocking, or superior, or disappointed, but…as if she would simply like him to enjoy himself. And that’s probably oversimplifying it, but perhaps there’s something to oversimplification.

He raises his hand and puts it tentatively on her waist. Lagertha accepts it, not reacting one way or the other, and after another moment, Athelstan moves it to pull a few centimeters of her shirt out of her jeans. Then Lagertha moves, nudging him backwards till they run into the couch. He sits down and she straddles him, her hands rising to thread into his hair as she kisses him.

For a few seconds he sinks into it, just allowing the sensations to wash over him. Then a noise catches his attention and he pulls back. Ragnar, of course—he’s tamped down on the enthusiasm, but just barely, practically vibrating in place as he slides onto the couch next to Athelstan. He has his hand on Lagertha’s back and his eyes are devouring strips of Athelstan every time they flick up and down, but he’s oddly careful to not actually touch, even shifting his hand away when Athelstan’s fingers brush against it as Athelstan pulls more at Lagertha’s shirt.

Athelstan chalks it up to the two of them having one of those silent-communication moments; apparently, it’s Lagertha’s turn. And she’d very much like it, says the fingers she uses to tip Athelstan’s face back to her.

Still, as energetic as her kisses are, they don’t seem to be progressing very much. Which takes Athelstan a bit of time to realize, and then understand; suppressing a grunt of annoyance, he pries his hands from her breasts to start tugging at his trousers. And he makes himself lean back to look at her.

“I would like to, and then we can go see about the gift,” he says, with as much deliberation as he can manage on barely any breath.

She looks down at him, and then he can see when she understands, her eyes lighting up a split second before she smiles again, pushing him down against Ragnar.

* * *

Brichester’s in the north of England, but it’s a large metropolitan city. It may not be London, but Athelstan has been there too, as well as Paris and a few other great cities of the world, and still, he finds himself staring a bit when they get to the nearest grocery store. “There really are a _lot_ of avocadoes. Well, and citrus, but…”

“I don’t think that will work, they will be too used to them,” Ragnar says, as if Athelstan had made a serious suggestion. He wanders into the next aisle, then pops back out when it becomes clear that neither Athelstan nor Lagertha are following. “We know what we are eating.”

“We do not know what kind of wine they like,” Lagertha says, not looking at him.

Ragnar stands and looks at her for a moment, clearly at a loss, and…it’s strangely human, Athelstan thinks, and then mentally corrects himself. They’re human, of course, but Ragnar’s baffled air is—is the kind of human that Athelstan intuitively grasps, rather than having to work through a chain of logical suppositions. And again, not that he minds spending that effort, but…

“We know what we are eating,” Ragnar says, with slightly more emphasis on the last word.

Lagertha continues to study the baked-goods display. “If you would like to have a bottle of wine, then you can have a bottle of wine. No one is stopping you.”

With a noise that’s equal parts frustrated and dismissive, Ragnar flicks his hands into the air and then walks back into the aisle. A small smile briefly peeks out around the hand Lagertha has pressed to her mouth. 

“I would not worry about that,” she says. She reaches her other hand out and pokes a container of cookies, then leans in slightly and sniffs. Then frowns and moves onto a boxed pithivier. “Men always think that a drink together will fix everything.”

“Is that what he’s thinking?” Athelstan asks.

Not with any particular goal in mind, much less Lagertha giving him a sharply thoughtful look. “Or they think that a drink will loosen the tongue, or other things, and _they_ will never be the ones who let out the secrets. I do not think that people who can send us as many forms as they have would be that careless.”

“Ah, well, extensive paperwork isn’t necessarily a sign of great care,” Athelstan has to caveat. “But honestly, in this case, I think you’re right.”

“I did not think that Cthulhic entities meant people do not still act like people,” Lagertha says. She seems to like the pithivier better, and starts to go through the stack of them, sniffing and tilting the containers. “Do _you_ think that we should worry?”

“I—no. Well, I don’t…know.” Athelstan grimaces, rubbing at his hip. Then he realizes he’s just tracing the outline of his phone against his jeans and stops himself. “I don’t have any reason to believe that this is anything besides a dinner invitation. There’s no reason it should be. I hardly know these people, but…are you saying I should be more paranoid?”

Lagertha settles on a pithivier and tucks it under her arm. “I thought that that was a problem under their rules,” she says, turning to look at him.

“Well, it is, and under Brichester’s rules, if it’s linked to a mental disorder that might—but anyway, so you’re saying I should not be,” Athelstan says, flustered. Then he tilts his head. “Because you and Ragnar are already doing something?”

Oddly, Lagertha doesn’t seem pleased at that suggestion, and he doesn’t quite think it’s because he guessed right. She pauses, and then steps up to him, lifting one hand to put against his chest. “We told you we would follow the rules. This is your career, and you _want_ it to be your career, and we are only here to help you.”

Yes, but they’re still working out what exactly that means. But pointing that out makes Athelstan feel more than a little small, considering that they are, in fact, working on it, and that Ragnar and Lagertha both seem to welcome discussion. Athelstan’s the one who seems perpetually uncomfortable.

“You know, I don’t think it really matters that much what we bring, or even if we bring something,” Athelstan finally says. “I think it just shows that we thought about it and we’re treating this as a social gathering, rather than…I don’t know, something political.”

“I agree,” Lagertha says. She moves around Athelstan, her hand drifting to clasp at his arm instead. “But since we are, I think it should be something we ourselves like. We cannot be sure about them, but we can be about ourselves. And you like almonds—you bought three croissants at the airport.”

Athelstan flushes. “I…yes, I might have…a rather large weakness for marzipan, if I’m honest.”

“We do not mind,” Lagertha says, smiling, throwing an affectionately conspiratorial look over her shoulder at him. Her hand rubs up and down his arm, not inviting, just reassuring. “But you want to go back to your work, don’t you?”

“I do,” Athelstan admits after a moment’s debate. “Not that I didn’t mind the trip, but…there is a lot to do here, and their Nemeton really is the real deal, I really wasn’t expecting that but the channeling through a completely independent organism, that’s—sorry. I’m rambling.”

Lagertha smiles again, then leans up to peck him on the cheek. “You are free to ramble,” she says. Then, her expression going a little tart, she turns around. “As free as Ragnar is to wander.”

“I am right here, and you can see me,” Ragnar says, not looking over at them as he spreads his arms out to either side of him. He lets them float for a moment, then drops them to his sides, the momentum rocking him slightly on his feet. “Everything is pink.”

“No, there are reds at the end,” Athelstan says, peering past the man. “Although I really didn’t know there were that many kinds of rosé.”

Ragnar grins at him, then side-backsteps to come up next to him, tossing an arm around Athelstan’s shoulders when he’s near enough. “Can I see your phone?” he mutters into Athelstan’s hair.

“What?” Athelstan says, blinking. “Oh, to find a recomm—”

Then he notices Lagertha. She appears to be just looking at the bottles and bottles of wine, just like Ragnar, but she has her chin tilted slightly up and her nostrils are soundlessly flaring: scenting the air as quietly as possible. Athelstan presses his lips together, then glances at Ragnar.

“Other aisle, not a werewolf, but I would still keep your voice down,” Ragnar says in a very calm, measured tone. “I would like to see your guidelines. I do not remember what they say for this, and I do not want to do something that would mean you cannot go to dinner.”

The local pack guidelines, Athelstan suddenly realizes. That’s what Ragnar is referring to. Athelstan nods and digs out his phone, but his hand is trembling a little so he has to try twice before unlocking it. He bites back a curse and then searches through his email—so many of them at this point—before finally finding the right attachment.

“Never mind,” Lagertha says abruptly. 

“What?” Athelstan says, and then remembers Ragnar’s warning.

Ragnar pats his shoulder. “Eh, he’s too far to hear now.”

“Who?” Athelstan says. “What happened—who was in the other aisle? Was it one of them—”

“No—I don’t _think_ ,” Ragnar says, sounding a little more reserved than usual. “Hmm.”

“Perhaps we ask them,” Lagertha says. Not suggests.

For a moment…except they’re here because of him, and it’s his Brichester security clearance that’s covering them all. He can’t pretend he’s not involved. “Ask them what?”

“He smelled like a hunter,” Ragnar says, but undercuts it with his noncommittal shoulder-wiggle. “Maybe.”

“Well, what’s in that aisle?” Athelstan asks. “Knives?”

As it turns out…there is no aisle on that side. Instead there is a small florist and houseplant station, alongside a small selection of home décor items, and curiously, Ragnar and Lagertha think the hunter was more interested in the home décor than the plants.

“These are what he was touching,” Ragnar says. “Maybe it was a druid instead.”

“If it was, we should still ask,” Lagertha says, looking up from Athelstan’s phone. “The guidelines request this.”

The two of them look at each other, and although neither of them say anything or make any movements, they clearly are working out some sort of disagreement. Athelstan shifts, uncomfortable under the gathering tension, and then feels—or thinks he feels—his control shift as well. 

He pulls his phone out of Lagertha’s hand and twists around, frantically scanning the store, but thankfully no one else is here. Also, nothing seems to be out of alignment—almost. Grimacing, Athelstan mutters under his breath and traces a few runes in the air, and the non-Euclidean spikes disappear from the ceiling vent.

“Athelstan?” Lagertha says from behind him.

“It’s fine. It’s fine, I just…it’s fine now,” Athelstan says, and takes a breath.

Then he jumps as someone touches his shoulder. Ragnar, not Lagertha, and with a genuinely guilty look, the man pulls his hand back a few centimeters. Which in turn makes Athelstan feel guilty.

“We are done shopping,” Ragnar says, obviously as a prelude to exiting them from the store as soon as possible.

“Yes. Yes, sorry, I just…oh, right, the hunter,” Athelstan says. “But wait, we should tell them. The guidelines do ask that we don’t tackle any ourselves without checking with them first—I suppose that’s because two of them _are_ hunters, they wouldn’t want you to accidentally take on a relative.”

“We will tell them,” Ragnar says, in patently less-than-enthusiastic agreement. But it is agreement, and he does seem to want to leave, given he then takes Athelstan by the arm. “We will file the report, like the guidelines say we should. If that is what they want us to do, that is what we will do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovecraft does all sorts of racist conflate-y things with incest and miscegenation themes, but if you need some specific references, start with _The Rats in the Walls_ (which also is now a hilarious web [minigame](https://alexblechman.itch.io/theratsinthewalls)) and _Medusa's Coil_ (very messed-up, you honestly might want to check a summary before you try--and then go read Gemma Files' refutation in _Hairwork_ ). Anyway, yes, Stiles is fully ironically aware that his, Derek, and Peter's functionally healthy incest is a big ol' finger to Miskatonic's ideas there. 
> 
> A pithivier is a delicious pastry and you should really try one if you get a chance.


	9. Chapter 9

“Oh, that’s really nice of you, Scott can put it in the fridge while I finish up,” Allison says upon seeing the beer in Derek’s hands. “We just have a couple wine bottles and I was wondering if that would be right or not. I haven’t really had a ton of time to look into Norwegian food.”

Derek raises his eyebrows and Scott gives him an uncharacteristically sharp _please don’t_ look (although the ‘please’ is still in there), while Allison hustles back into the kitchen. Which, even from the living room, seems very…occupied.

“I told her about the whole fix our first impression idea, and I think she took it to heart,” Scott mumbles, glancing after her. He absently takes one of the beer packs from Derek. “Maybe a little too much. She gets that way sometimes when, you know…”

“Someone reminds her that her family name doesn’t lend much credibility to claims of peaceful meetings?” Peter says.

Scott opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t even sigh, just looks very disappointed in Peter. It’s Quint on his shoulder who goes very straight and tall, peering at Peter, and then suddenly flings a bunch of vegetable peels at Peter’s face.

“I’ll put these away, and get you a napkin,” Scott says, backing off, not exactly reveling in the moment but also not exactly wagging a finger at the triumphant rodent riding high on his head.

“Peter, listen, you know I love you, but you just got owned by a semi-sentient tentacled squirrel and I kind of can’t disagree with them,” Stiles says, biting back his sigh. “Okay, look, last chance—I really meant it when I said you didn’t have to get involved anymore, and I’m fine to do all my academic socializing without you, and it’s not about pretending I’m not cohabitating with you, it’s about _not making you do things you hate._ So…”

So Peter is weirdly staring at Stiles. It’s not the act of staring itself that is weird, because yeah, Peter does that a lot. And the same part of Stiles that shamelessly preens at getting first-author on a paper also counts that as among the things that make Peter attractive to him, but…it’s the expression, Stiles decides. That stiff, blank, placeholder face Peter uses whenever he’s having an emotion he can’t immediately reconcile with his mental identity as the Svengali of the Hale pack. Except these days he usually only has that on for a second or so before he either pops a distracting one-liner or actually admits to having human vulnerabilities, but this has gone on for at least five.

“Hey,” Derek says, looking extremely uncomfortable with this (standard for him, actually reassuring in this moment). “Your phone’s doing that—the semi-urgent one, right?”

“Huh? Oh, um, no, wouldn’t call this semi-urgent, more like do-not-ignore but without an immediate deadline on it,” Stiles says, pulling his buzzing phone out.

He thumbs into his email and opens up the one causing all the fuss, then blinks. Then goes over to the nearest piece of furniture so he can get out his laptop and prop it on top and log into Miskatonic’s portal.

“More updates on our visitors’ backgrounds?” Peter says.

Stiles glances up, then takes a second one. Peter looks back with slightly-muted curiosity, as if the awkward moment just now hadn’t even happened. And that’s a rarer but not uncommon coping mechanism of his, and…Stiles is not going to poke right now, but also, not actually calling this a pass. 

It's just that in this town, certain things take priority over sorting out nebulous emotional issues. “So…you know how we put into the guidelines that if they ran into a hunter or someone like that, we wanted them to tell us instead of taking them out, so we can run some interference checks _before_ bodies land in Melissa’s morgue?”

“They ran into somebody?” Derek guesses, perking up. As he does when he thinks the problem’s going to simplify down to a physical fight.

“Well, it wasn’t an actual run-in, so hold on running out for the pre-dinner warm-up ass-kicking,” Stiles says. “Our guests saw suspicious activity at the grocery store, so they filed a report.”

Derek’s eyebrows toggle between skeptical and confused, and then settle on the former as he comes over to look at the laptop. “A report? Like…what, did Melissa stick in a police form or something? I don’t remember us putting that in.”

“I think when you sent over that list to the Office of Interspecies Relations, they might’ve Miskatonicified it a little,” Stiles admits. “But yeah, see, it’s…actually pretty detailed. And very…specific about what they know and what they’re deducing from what they know, and…look, here, let’s just sit down and digest this.”

Which they do, to the point that Stiles had totally meant to pregame the rules of engagement (especially with Allison in homemaker overdrive mode), but just doesn’t get to it. Instead they’re still filling Stiles in on some encounter with a rogue-but-not-darach druid from the high school years involving adulterated wolfsbane when all three werewolves—Scott came back and immediately got sucked into the which-enemy-was-that debate—suddenly raise their heads.

“Are they here?” Allison calls from the kitchen.

A second later, she comes out, a couple Quintlets scurrying ahead of her, redoing her ponytail, smears of this and that still on her jaw and the backs of her hands. Scott catches her attention and nods at her hands, and she makes a face and grabs a tissue on the way to the street-facing window. The Quintlets climb up opposite sides of the window before merging to Quint jumping onto the top of the window’s bottom half.

“Okay, then,” Stiles says, hastily logging out and shutting down his laptop. “So, look, I was saying—”

“We’ll be civil,” Peter says. He’s…not defensive-sounding, but his tone is oddly flat. And his face is heading that way too. Then he seems to catch himself, and leans over to just rub his cheek against the side of Stiles’ throat. “I said we would be, and I meant it, without any conditions on it.”

“Oh. Oh, right, that—” Stiles blushes, because seriously, yeah, _that_ was an important discussion too “—and also, the potential hunter or druid—”

“Honestly, if they’re here, we can just ask what they meant,” Derek says, shrugging. “We’re just guessing.”

And with that unusual bit of nonviolent common sense from Derek, their guests are here and it’s time for greetings. 

“Hello,” Athelstan says, putting his hand out and then freezing, with his eyes flicking to either side of him.

“Hey take two,” Stiles says, shaking said hand and then backing up to let—good, Allison’s picking up on the vibe and slides right in. “Thanks for coming.”

“Yes, thanks so much! I know this morning was a little…dramatic, but I hope you do feel like you’re welcome here,” Allison says with a bright smile. So okay, she’s not really picking up on the vibe so much as riding her own insecurities straight on till morning. “I’ve just got the food warming in the kitchen so—oh, you brought something!”

Ragnar, looking very bemused at all of the gushing, seems to deliberately avoid touching Allison’s fingers as he hands off the box of pastry. “We are guests. This is appropriate, where we come from.”

“Right, of course—well, thank you! I did have a dessert—but we can always eat that tomorrow. Dessert’s not really my strong point anyway,” Allison says, faltering and then overcompensating as she invites them in, points out where they can put the coats nobody except Athelstan is wearing, asks whether they’d like a drink.

“That one?” Ragnar says hopefully, nodding at the remaining beer pack Derek has.

Derek blinks hard (like Peter, he sometimes has to manually reboot his expression when encountering empathy), and in the intervening pause, Scott jumps in. “Sure, but did you want it cold?”

Ragnar smiles, mostly without showing his teeth. “If you have it.”

“Right, I’ll just…” Scott starts to move towards the kitchen, only to bump into Allison. 

They move apart, both looking embarrassed, and Scott moves around, only to find that she’s blocking him again. She’s still talking, pointing out where they can all take seats as if the place isn’t open-floor plan, and at this point her friendliness has a definite, obvious structure to it. She wants their visitors to seat themselves before she’s going to turn her back on them, or let Scott do that.

And now that Stiles is looking for it, Peter is…staying back and watching, especially Lagertha who is watching him back, and that does not bode well. Maybe dinner was a terrible idea.

That’s when Quint scampers across the floor towards Athelstan, who immediately startles and then gets down on his knees, digging in his pockets for something and ignoring the way Ragnar’s just grabbed his shoulder. Lagertha grabs Ragnar’s arm before the man can do something stupid, like try and throw an ax at Quint, but neither of them look particularly okay with this.

“Oh, hello,” Athelstan says, sounding just as nervous, but without the potential for edge weapons. “I—well, right, sorry, I didn’t think this was supposed to be a formal conversation—”

“I don’t think he’s channeling right now,” Scott says. He’s pulled away from Allison but is hanging back; he definitely sees the tension in the Lothbroks, but when Stiles makes to come over, Scott shakes his head. Keeps his eyes on Quint. “I think he just smells your—”

“I’m sorry, I think it said peanuts are preferable but I completely forgot when we were in the store and all the airport had in the way of organic was almonds,” Athelstan says, producing a small plastic baggie.

Allison lets out a strangled noise, like if you killed a cat to a laughtrack. “I don’t think—Quint really minds processed foods, so far as we can tell.”

Quint sniffs at the baggie, then withdraws. Athelstan frowns and starts to open it for him, but then a pair of tentacles shoots around and grabs either corner. They yank, Quint pushes his head in, and then politely returns the empty baggie to Athelstan before abruptly splitting into a Quintlet per nut and then filing off to the closet where his main nest is.

“That is fascinating to see in a mammal,” Athelstan says, blinking slowly. He apparently wasn’t listening to Allison at all. “You see it all the time in post-exposure lichens, and in fact—you know, it had occurred to me in reading up on the case history that oaks commonly are hosts to—”

“Oh, I see where you’re going with that, I never even thought of—you’re totally right, they are using the same model,” Stiles says, grabbing his head. He’d just been thinking of Quint’s cloning ability as its own thing, but of course not, it’s all related to the tree and obviously they should be accounting for plant-originated effects. “I need to go adjust the yarnwork, if that’s the case then there should be a signal—”

Athelstan looks up. “You’re doing some string models?”

“Oh, yeah, I just put them—”

“So this report you filed,” Derek suddenly says, reminding Stiles that right, some drama had been brewing. “About the guy in the store who smelled of wolfsbane.”

Ragnar is totally showing teeth now. “Yes. We wrote a report.”

“Yes, we did not see him and so we do not know if we know him,” Lagertha says, with a slight shift so that she’s in front of Ragnar. “But as we are here, we have given you the information that you ask for.”

“We saw that,” Peter says. His tone is unusually flat and serious. “But he was in the plant section, it said.”

“When we went, he was gone. But that was where he was,” Ragnar says. “I do not think he had wolfsbane on him, but we did not see for sure.”

“Wait, sorry, what?” Allison says sharply, her hostess act completely gone. Her hand is even twitching back towards the crossbow she currently doesn’t have slung over her back. “Who’s walking around with wolfsbane?”

“Do you think it’s that guy?” Scott says.

Ragnar and Lagertha both perk up, not necessarily in a friendly way. “‘That guy’?” Ragnar says. “I would like to hear more.”

Stiles grimaces and puts his hand up. “So if we’re going to skip the small talk and I guess just have a pre-meal strategy meeting, I think maybe we should go over some—”

“We put that in so that before you disrupted any relationships, we could know and deal with it,” Peter suddenly breaks in. “Since this isn’t your territory.”

“It is not, and we have sent you the report so you _can_ deal with it,” Lagertha ripostes back. She and Peter eye each other, and then she tosses her hair back over one shoulder. “We are guests of Athelstan, and he is here for knowledge, not for fighting. However, if you would like to ask us what we know, we do not mind helping.”

“Well, I can’t possibly turn down such an offer from alphas of your caliber, can I?” Peter says, although his body language is very much indicating he could. But then he—he doesn’t look around or anything like that, but Stiles knows him well enough to peg when Peter suddenly realizes he’s got to cover off on something, and that’s what happens. _Seating_ arrangements—Peter takes a couple transparently strategic steps when he turns and sweeps a hand towards Scott and Allison’s living-room furniture. “Let’s discuss it.”

“We probably should. I’m not sure what’s going on, but if your medium is channeling that publicly, I don’t think it’s wise to have someone dedicated to rooting out the supernatural in town,” Athelstan says, getting back to his feet. And, as far as Stiles can tell, picking up on the tension but totally oblivious to the way that he catches Ragnar and Lagertha off-guard and forces them to move back to less protective positions. “Also, now that you mention it, if you’ve got some string models already up—”

“No beer?” Ragnar says off-handedly to Derek.

“Stiles boots his laptop up first,” Derek says. “Don’t know how long you’ve been doing this, but you break out the booze after you’re through the Miskatonic firewall, not before.”

Ragnar gives Derek a flat look that doesn’t match the lingering smirk on his face, but falls in behind Athelstan, along with Lagertha. They’re both right back into flanking positions the moment that the furniture allows it. Derek, meanwhile, has a second where he’s patently enjoying that he got in a hit (he usually keeps that beneath his scowl, at least until after Peter’s left the room) before he and Peter start maneuvering around for the good seats.

“Stiles,” Scott mutters, coming over as Stiles starts to pull his laptop back out. “Do you think…”

“I think I’m really hoping you have some killer hors d’oeuvres in there,” Stiles mutters. “At least we can take out the hanger variable.”

“I made Buffalo wings,” Allison says. She presses her lips together, then turns around. “I’ll add some extra hot sauce.”

Scott frowns. “I’m not sure…” he says, but she’s already heading back to the kitchen, so he scoots after her.

For a second, with his laptop in his hand, Stiles has the stray thought that maybe he should’ve majored in Communications or Psychology, even with the higher institutionalization rate. There are so many nonverbal cues flying around, and sure, Peter and Derek are talking to him but it’s not like they can freeze the moment and dissect everything right there (at least not without risking the Hounds of Tindalos). 

But it still hasn’t gotten violent, he reminds himself. Sure, it’s been emotionally uncomfortable, but if he can’t deal with that, he’s never going to get through his dissertation defense. So just let this play out, he tells himself. Just see what they have to say, and go from there.

* * *

“But why would a hunter be in the flower section?” Allison ponders again, idly prodding her spoon into her deer stew. “It’s way too late in the year to sprout fresh wolfsbane. Unless you have a growlight set-up but if you have that, we’d know. The heat signature would be off the charts.”

“Well, I do not know,” Lagertha says, heaping a few more dumplings into her bowl. She pushes each one under with her spoon, then looks at Stiles. Then nods a thanks after he realizes he’s got the chopped chives and hands them over. “It sounds as if your American hunters are very different from our hunters. And you are the American hunter.”

“You’re the one who was standing there for five minutes and all you got was that he wanted some pots,” Derek says. Then he raises his hand. “No, those are mine. Unless you want the hot sauce again?”

Ragnar, playing like he’s amused, gives Derek a little gracious hand-wave to take the chicken wings off the plate before he selects a few that aren’t quite as spicy (if not for the constant undercurrent of tension, Ragnar’s eye-bulging moment upon tasting a Derek-style wing would’ve been very funny). “I understand that you are not really a hunter now. Yes?”

“My family hunts, but we follow a code of conduct that concentrates on protecting those who need it, and not just on killing things or people we don’t understand,” Allison says, with a little edge to it. 

“Look, we’re not here to fight each other, we’re talking about this hunter,” Scott says. He has his hand on Allison’s thigh and that typical earnestness in his expression, but also, he ended up taking the seat between all of them and the wall with all the windows. “And we told you, he’s not from any of the families, and so far all he’s done is wander around and ask questions. He hasn’t hurt anyone so we can’t just go after him.”

“This is where I think I do not understand,” Ragnar says, leaning forward. He tears a strip off the wing and chews it down, then swigs from his beer. “He has not hurt anyone yet, so I _would_ go after him, so he cannot.”

“You could drug him, if you do not want to kill him,” Lagertha adds.

“We’re trying to not attract any attention, given we’ve got an entire research site here,” Stiles jumps in, before Peter or Derek can succumb to the annoyed expressions he knows they want to make. “He’s acting like he has people who’ll check on him.”

Ragnar shrugs. “So do it quietly and wipe his memory.”

“I don’t think—wouldn’t that be a request straight to the Ethics and Repression Board?” Athelstan says. “I thought you use the same standard we do, I don’t think that would pass…”

This Board is not something that Ragnar is familiar with, and he lets the uncertainty show on his face. Then, with a shoulder tuck that says he totally knows Peter saw that, he turns to Athelstan. Wiggles his fingers to catch the man’s attention. “Not with your ways, with werewolf ways.”

“Werewolf ways?” Athelstan repeats blankly.

“Oh, you don’t know?” Scott says, looking embarrassed on Athelstan’s behalf.

“The point Stiles is trying to make is that unless we have the perfect moment for an intervention, the downstream risk far outweighs the reward,” Peter says. He’s not interrupting because he feels sorry for Ragnar or Lagertha, who clearly feels as if Ragnar shouldn’t have introduced that, and Stiles slides his free hand back behind Peter till he can tuck it into a pants pocket. The side of Peter’s mouth quirks up but he keeps going. “And so far, it doesn’t sound like we have one. Although it’s unfortunate we’ve missed an opportunity to find out more about exactly what the man is after—he’s not known to _us_ either, so it doesn’t seem to be a personal matter.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like you,” Ragnar says. He puts his bowl down and stretches backwards, then drops one arm across the top of the loveseat and smiles. “Hunters don’t like werewolves. That is how it is.”

“ _Some_ hunters don’t,” Scott says pointedly. “Anyway, like we were saying, we’re not even sure he’s in town for werewolves. He was asking a couple questions like he was at the beginning, but he’s not really trying to follow any of us.”

Lagertha nibbles demurely at a spoonful of dumpling. “Perhaps he has already learned you all, while you were waiting.”

Stiles’ phone buzzes against the table. He pokes it and glances down, then unlocks it and checks this _new_ email forward from Brichester.

Which says Athelstan wants to talk to him in the kitchen and sorry about spoofing an email but this should only take a second. 

Stiles looks back up. Athelstan’s phone is also on the table, but the man is currently chewing nervously on some roasted carrots, so…he must have spoofed the email and put it on a timed send a couple minutes ago. And he did that without giving anything away to anyone, on his phone, and upgrading a Miskatonic push notification urgency flag is normally the kind of spellwork that takes chanting and arm-waving and a significant, literal sacrifice.

“Hey, you want me to get dessert out?” Stiles says to Allison.

“Oh, sure,” she says, more interested in what Lagertha’s saying-while-subtly-insulting-Peter.

Derek flicks a look over, which Stiles solves by reaching for the man’s empty plate. “Yeah, sugarbabe, I’ll get you first piece,” Stiles says.

So that distracts Derek with having to figure out how to react, while it tips Peter off to the fact that Stiles isn’t just randomly doing this, which is all Peter needs to not wonder if Stiles is plotting something. Since he knows Stiles is, he won’t think about it. And then, Stiles is in the kitchen.

So is Athelstan, having managed to test the cohesion wards on the apartment out of sheer startlement when somebody banged a cup and then stammered his way to the kitchen to make sure they were reinforced. Which also is a good reason to throw up a privacy ward.

“Nice work,” Stiles says, genuinely impressed. Then he drops Derek’s slice of pastry on the plate. “Okay, so what the hell is with your two? Because if this isn’t about getting us out from under the smothering blanket of passive-aggressiveness out there, I’m seriously rethinking whether I wanna admit I used your take on miasmatic curvature.”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Athelstan hisses, looking harried. “They honestly do not want the territory. They’ve said that, I believe them, I believe them because _I_ don’t want it, I just want to study the Nemeton and when I leave they plan to come with me, and—you did? I actually hadn’t gotten a chance to test that in the field. Is it working?”

“Um, I mean, I haven’t gotten around to checking the data feed but it didn’t warp anything to Yog-Sothoth during set-up,” Stiles says. Then shakes himself. “Wait—”

“Right, why are they baiting each other?” Athelstan mutters. He sighs and rubs at his face. “I don’t know. But then I don’t really know werewolves that well—can they alter memories? Is it spell-based?”

Stiles shakes his head before thinking about it. Then he does. “Aren’t you all banging?”

“They’re not changing my _memories_ about it,” Athelstan says, a little dry sarcasm coming into his voice. Then it goes self-deprecating. “And if they tried, I doubt it’d stick given my, ah, my current…abilities…”

“You actually think they _would_?” Stiles says, gaping for a second. Then he glances over his shoulder, but the group in the living room still seem involved in their argument. “Hey, listen, I know your file says you—you need to have sex, but I didn’t think you—it doesn’t matter who your partner is, right, and if they’re, if you need he—”

Athelstan looks puzzled, and then his eyes widen. “Oh, _no_ , no, no, I didn’t mean it like—it hasn’t come up. I don’t think it should come up. I didn’t even know they could do that, and now that I do, I don’t think they would want to do it to me. They’re not…I think they do like me. I think that’s why they act like this, because they…like me.”

“Okay,” Stiles says after a moment. This still isn’t closing the loop for him, because the way Athelstan says that they ‘like’ him is…odd. But also it doesn’t sound brainwashed or victimized, and Miskatonic’s come into the modern age enough to use the Asenath Waite case as an issue-spotting model for exploitation, rather than a warning against certain eldritch studies. So he doesn’t think Athelstan’s in danger. “Okay. So…what, do we need to sit down and explain that the last thing anybody here’s gonna want to do is take you out?” 

For a long moment, Athelstan stares at him. It’s long enough that Stiles mentally checks that he had been speaking English and not—well, but even if he’d slipped into conversational Latin or something like that, Athelstan should still have been able to understand him.

“Is _that_ why you think they’re acting this way?” Athelstan finally asks, in the kind of faint voice you usually use when you’ve just realized that the nightmare you’ve been having is actually real and was codified into its own area of study fifty years ago. “Oh—oh, no, don’t tell me that your werewolves think we’re out to kill _you_.”

“I…no, I mean, not specifically that. They just get really defensive whenever there’s a potential threat,” Stiles says, still puzzled by Athelstan’s reaction. It’s like the guy isn’t familiar with werewolf mindsets at all. “It’s not personal, it’s just that we have a lot of that around here, and they tend to get physical over psychological, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ve unfortunately started to see that,” Athelstan mutters. He sighs and idly waves his hand around to tweak at the wards. “Right, and this hunter we’re all going on about, it’s a convenient thing to focus on that doesn’t require a lot of explanation about interdimensional side-effects.”

Stiles had been thinking that, sort of, but hadn’t really let it coalesce in his head out of trying to trust in Derek and Peter just remembering all the stuff he’s told them. “Well…since you bring it up, we are having to explain a lot of University red tape. I mean, the intentions were sound, just don’t have any surprises, but up till recently people here are kind of used to a less structured environment. When you’ve spent most of your life improvising in a minefield, having a map is abnormal, I guess. But Miskatonic—well, you know. So they’re trying to work with it.”

“That’s a good point, actually, I hadn’t considered…” Athelstan shakes himself, glancing past Stiles into the living room, and come to think of it, they are getting in danger of outstaying their excuses “…this may be a foolish question, but is there any reason why no one has just looked at the man’s things?”

“Uh,” Stiles says. “Huh. No idea, let’s ask.”

* * *

“I did not think that crime was allowed under your visa,” Ragnar says, looking and sounding thoroughly amused. 

“I don’t think it should be. We just spent a lot of time explaining our problems with the local police,” Allison says sharply.

They weren’t gone for _so_ long that things could have escalated, Athelstan thinks, and then he shoves down the creeping sense of despair and clears his throat. “I don’t think that was really what I was driving at, sorry.”

“Yeah, also, while the local law point is valid, so is the fact that Miskatonic has an entire handbook on how to bamboozle said local law when it’s in the greater interest of humanity’s continued existence,” Stiles says, catching Athelstan’s eye. He nods in sympathy and then glances around the group. “Look, nobody’s…gonna mess around in something that isn’t their business, but we can just ask out of sheer curiosity, right? I mean, we’re academics researching that which kind of shouldn’t be known, except once that door’s open, you can’t shut it and you might as well learn what kind of self-perpetuating chaotic horror is out there. And you’re totally free to tell us to shut up.”

“I don’t think we need to be that conservative,” says Peter, with a pointed look at Allison. “And as a matter of fact, a closer investigation has been discussed.”

This clearly comes as a surprise to Stiles, who turns around to look at Peter. “Really? And somebody vetoed it?”

“No, we just didn’t get around to actually figuring out a plan before you all touched down,” Derek says, before he digs back into his slice of pithivier.

When they’d come back out of the kitchen, Stiles and Athelstan had brought dessert with them, pre-portioned mostly as a way to explain the length of time they’d needed. However, it’d immediately become clear that food was no longer interesting to most of the people in the room…except Derek, who had helped himself without missing a beat in glowering at Ragnar.

Thankfully, Ragnar seems to find the entire thing more worthy of a smirk than of commentary, and just drapes his arm around Athelstan’s shoulders. Lagertha’s the one who takes up the conversation. “I thought you said that he has been here for nearly a week,” she says. “This takes so long to discuss?”

“It does if the guy isn’t actually hurting anyone yet, and you’re more busy trying to talk to the Nemeton about why it wants to have babies,” Allison snaps. Then her boyfriend puts one hand on her arm, and with an effort, she composes herself. “ _Are_ you going to figure that out for us? We’re putting a lot of things on hold to try and give you space for it.”

That’s a little accusatory, as well as not exactly how research works, but Athelstan doubts that saying so will help de-escalate matters. He doesn’t have to look to either side of himself to know Ragnar and Lagertha are probably baring their teeth again. “Well, I won’t be able to go to the site for a day or so, since I think we’d want to make sure the spellwork can withstand me,” he says, as inoffensively as he can. “It _did_ seem to want to talk, and if it’d like to, ah, discuss things, I can certainly make myself available. But I have a feeling that we’re only going to be able to get so far that way—every entity is limited by its own experiences, and with newly-sentient beings, that’s usually exacerbated by how they don’t—”

“Um, so the Nemeton’s not really newly-sentient, it’s different sentient,” Stiles interrupts. “They gave you the brief—”

“Yes, and I’m also familiar with Nemetons from my undergraduate work, but they would only rate for basic-level consciousness, not for awareness,” Athelstan says patiently. “It’s why they don’t qualify for eldritch status, even though from the point of view of sheer potential for mayhem—”

Stiles puts his chin on his hand. “Oh, seriously, so that’s why they classify it—that makes a lot more sense than doing it because you can sort of pretend to order one around. I mean, okay, by that standard, then shoggoths aren’t eldritch either—okay, but sorry, back to the question: why can’t we research this guy?”

As he asks, he turns back and looks at Peter again, who…doesn’t look resentful, Athelstan decides after a moment. But that flicker of emotion over the man’s face does have a bit of awkwardness to it.

“Because,” Peter says, with a sigh and a meaningful look at Scott. “He’s renting out the sheriff’s backyard.”

“It’s part of his excuse that he’s here for mushrooms,” Allison reluctantly says. “The place runs up against this little creek, and he says there’s a great patch, and he wants to host his mushroom-gathering there and—”

“Sorry,” Athelstan says, putting up his hand. “Sorry, I’m—did you say he’s claiming to be a _mushroom_ hunter?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why, yes, that was a first I-love-you in this universe, and Peter is emotionally constipated in a _totally_ , gloriously different way from Derek. 
> 
> I'm making up the growlight bit a little, but it's true that police often do use heat scanners to detect illegal weed farms, because the lights do get hot enough to have a heat signature detectable through walls and roofs.
> 
> Asenath Waite is from _The Thing on the Doorstep_ , an H.P. Lovecraft story which among other things involves body-snatching/possession (and I don't think it's really a spoiler to mention that because Lovecraft basically tips you off in introducing Asenath in the story).


	10. Chapter 10

“They are asking Stiles to tell them whether you are lying or not,” Lagertha observes as she and Ragnar walk Athelstan out to their rental car.

She doesn’t sound as if she finds this to reflect well on them, and Athelstan’s reminded of the way she had talked about Gisla. “I think that’s fair,” he says. “It’s not like many people have ever heard of Leng, let alone of their breakaway school.”

“Well, this Stiles should, should he not?” Ragnar says, dipping so that his breath brushes Athelstan’s forehead as he speaks.

“He is saying that,” Lagertha allows. She glances over her shoulder at the apartment building, and then lingers. Something like regret passes over her face. “I am not sure that they like us any better.”

“I don’t think that was the point,” Ragnar says, but he’s noticeably muted. He had insisted on driving over, even though the rental is registered to Athelstan, but doesn’t even attempt to take the keys now. He’s busy looking at the apartment windows too, and also eavesdropping, Athelstan assumes. “I think that this Stiles likes you, anyway.”

“I don’t think it’s romantic in any way, and he’s clearly already taken,” Athelstan says, almost without thinking. Then has a few regrets himself when Ragnar looks sharply at him. “Not that I was—I wasn’t loo—oh, you can smell that, can’t you?”

It comes out a bit petty, but oddly, seems to restore Ragnar’s good humor. He nods and grins.

“Well, at any rate, we survived, and we got a decent dinner out of it, and I think they’ve gotten a few pieces of information they find interesting,” Athelstan says, unlocking the car. “This should at least give them an idea why this hunter’s so behaving so oddly. So—”

“Shhh,” Ragnar whispers, suddenly as stiff as iron against Athelstan.

Athelstan looks up at him, sees the red glow in his eyes, and then twists around to look at—but Lagertha’s not there. He twists back around and Ragnar’s hand clamps down on his shoulder, silently telling him to not move either. 

The parking lot is well-lit, but the lights are focused on the lot itself, and it’s gotten dark enough that beyond the edges, Athelstan can hardly make out the road and the neighboring buildings. He bites his lip and then carefully wiggles his hand into his pocket to cover his phone. If he used magic, he probably could—but he doubts that they have extensive warding on the parking lot, and he doesn’t really want to risk accidentally opening a rift this close to Scott and Allison’s home.

He looks back up at Ragnar and the man is still staring at the apartment windows. Athelstan didn’t see or hear anyone follow them out, and there’s really no reason why they would have, but—“Should I call St—”

“ _Shh_ ,” Ragnar near-growls. 

Every animal instinct Athelstan has wants to shrink back from the sound, but…they can’t get into a fight. He’s already been kicked out of Norway, and if he has to call Ecbert again—he shakes his head and pulls his phone out. “I’m going to c—”

Ragnar shoves Athelstan back against the car and leaps forward at the same time, rising impossibly high into the air…then coming down on a dark, madly-twisting shape just outside of the parking lot lights’ reach. Athelstan hears a snarl and it’s a bit higher than Ragnar’s, so he thinks it’s Lagertha—at the same time someone calls out from the building. He whips around and one of the windows is open, with someone leaning out of it—he thinks it might be a window to Scott and Allison’s apartment.

“Wait!” he shouts, and then he runs towards the fighting, his phone held high. “Wait, I don’t—”

“Athelstan, get back,” snaps Lagertha’s voice, and then enough of the roiling mass extends into the light for him to see her, half-transformed, her clawed hands wresting with some sort of scaly limb.

Ragnar heaves into view, biting and tearing at the thing’s back. He hauls its head up far enough that Lagertha can twist out from under the limb and slash through its bared throat. The thing lets out a horrible dying cry, then writhes so violently that Ragnar’s thrown several meters clear.

He nearly flies into Athelstan, who throws himself down, expecting to be flattened anyway, and then—isn’t. Athelstan looks back up just in time to see wolf-Ragnar, who’d somehow redirected himself while in mid-air, take the thing’s lashing tail very heavily to the left leg. There’s a nasty wet noise and Ragnar scrabbles away on three legs, the fourth dragging limply. 

A last snarl brings Athelstan’s attention back to Lagertha, who’s in the middle of shoving at the reptilian’s foreleg so that it doesn’t sink its claws into her belly. Athelstan had thought she’d killed it—he scrambles to get his phone up again and hurriedly starts changing over the containment spell he’d been setting up to—

“No, wait! Wait, it’s not gonna—Stiles!” shouts Scott, as running feet come up from behind.

“No K’y-nan stuff it doesn’t interact with kanimas you’re gonna rift it!” Stiles yells, as if blasting pellets from a shotgun.

It’s just about as effective: Athelstan hesitates, teetering on one knee and his hand, and then yelps as someone grabs his phone-hand by the wrist. Then yelps again, more panicked, as he just glimpses Ragnar’s snarl-distorted face rising up from a few yards away.

“No, no, no, power down, trust me,” Stiles says, ignoring the angry werewolf and poking at Athelstan’s screen. He gets through two security layers and then yelps himself as the firewall finally catches up, yanking his finger back before the Yellow Sign can fully capture it. “You don’t wanna mix that with kanimas, you just end up reversing the geometries and we end up with unpredictable local rifts.”

“Well—but—undead—” Athelstan pants.

“Athelstan,” Lagertha says through what sounds like a car motor.

Stiles looks up, then sighs. “Not hurting him,” he says, hands in front of himself but not in a strictly neutral position—two fingers are bent almost into casting position—and with an impressively annoyed tone, considering both Lagertha and Ragnar are prowling towards him. “Trying to make sure he is _not_ gonna hurt anyone—at least who doesn’t deserve it, and okay, listen, you gotta stop that because otherwise I’m gonna have to hurt you so Peter and Derek and Scott don’t.”

“Not necess—” Athelstan coughs hard, then forces a breath and looks up. “I’m fine. I’m fine, stop it.”

Lagertha and Ragnar are nearest. Scott’s next-closest, although it takes Athelstan a second to recognize the man now that his face is shifted, and then Derek and Peter are several meters behind, coming up in what even Athelstan recognizes as flanking maneuvers. And right behind _them_ is Allison, with a very large crossbow pointed at Athelstan.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Athelstan emphasizes. Then stops to try and swallow so he doesn’t sound as burned as his throat currently feels. Or at least, he starts to do so, and then he thinks of something. “Oh—I didn’t do any—”

“Uh, no, I think the dimensions are still properly segregated,” Stiles says, glancing around. Then he pops his phone up in one hand and starts sweeping it back and forth in some sort of scan. “Yeah, not seeing—”

The reptilian abruptly lurches up. Athelstan sucks his breath, seeing Lagertha start to twist about, and he realizes she’s never going to move out of the way in time and—

His phone clatters to the ground. He winces and instinctively reaches for it, only to put his arm back when Lagertha rolls into him, grunting. She pushes herself up, then hisses and snatches at his wrist. And then freezes as a mechanical _twang_ rings through the air.

Athelstan can’t immediately see what happened, because right then Ragnar, now human again, arrives. He’s still breathing heavily, and winces roughly as he drops onto one knee, but he dips to look at Athelstan’s hand before he adjusts his weight. “This is filthy, it needs cleaning,” he mutters, pulling his shirt over his head.

Well, yes, it’s very ripped up and smeared at this—oh, he means Athelstan’s hand, which scraped itself bloody against the pavement at some point. Ragnar loops the cleanest part of the shirt around Athelstan’s palm and then leaves it to Lagertha to finish wrapping; someone’s moving and Ragnar’s pushing himself up to face them.

“Shouldn’t we have checked who they were first?” Scott is saying, with a look of dismay as he views the now _very_ dead reptilian.

“I don’t think it really matters how high-ranking they were, any Valusian is exempt from the treaties,” Athelstan says, blinking.

Stiles coughs awkwardly. “Um,” he says. “So. Not a Valusian, it’s a kanima. Not the same thing.”

Athelstan takes a second look around the crossbow bolt sticking out of the reptilian’s eye. “Oh…you’re right, the head is all wrong. And…are those vestigial wings? Wait, what did you call it? Did you say this is a kanima?”

“Scott, look, I know we managed to talk the others out of it but this one really didn’t look like it was going to back down, and she’d already slashed open its throat,” Allison is saying in a soothing but not particularly guilty tone. “If Athelstan hadn’t done that tesseract thing just now, she would’ve been—”

“Oh—oh, _damn_ , did I?” Athelstan asks, stupidly. “I did. Oh, damn it, I’m so sorry, you’ll—”

“Athelstan.” Lagertha puts her hand to Athelstan’s cheek so he has to look at her. “Athelstan. The paperwork _I_ will do. Whatever it is, I will do it.”

She’s very intense about it, and he’s not…entirely processing why she would be. He flinches from her gaze, even while feeling that that’s the wrong thing to do, and pushes himself up a little farther. “Well, but—”

“And we know him,” Lagertha says, turning to look at Scott and Allison. “He was our problem. If there are others in his wake, we will deal with it, not you.”

“Your problem?” Peter asks.

Ragnar shrugs, though his eyes are watching everyone carefully. “Row thirty…thirty-three.” He starts to grin as Peter tilts his head. “On the form.”

“He was not going to stop,” Lagertha continues, focusing on Scott and Allison. “I can tell you that. And I am sorry that we broke your guidelines, but that is the truth.”

Scott opens his mouth. Athelstan isn’t entirely sure whether the man plans to protest, or ask questions, or condemn, but what is clear is that Scott doesn’t want to simply leave it at that. And Lagertha’s hardly going to take that well, so Athelstan starts to push himself out from under her.

“Well, you’ll fill out the incident report and give us the details,” Allison says, a little louder than necessary. When Scott turns and frowns at her, she wraps her arm around his elbow and gives him a very intense look back. “You did say that.”

“Yes. I did.” This clearly is not going to be considered a peace offering, says Lagertha’s tone. 

“Look, yeah, we’ll need one, but let’s be realistic about our priorities here,” Stiles says, also picking up on the tone and looking uneasy about it. “We’re in a parking lot and the people here aren’t totally convinced Scott’s gone straight after his wild high-school gangster days, so let’s deal with this body.”

Ragnar snorts, and then unconvincingly pulls a straight face when Allison glares at him. “Is that what they call us here?”

“Um, no, they didn’t know I’m a wer—” Scott starts, only for Allison to pull him away, muttering about calling his mother.

“I agree,” Lagertha says. She gets to her feet, grimacing as her bones pop, and then extends one arm to Ragnar. “Einar has already come back once—” she pauses as Ragnar uses the help to wrench his body around, straightening his leg in a sickening _crunch_ “—and he should not do it again.”

“How _did_ that happen?” Peter says, and then smiles with a hint of eyeteeth at her. “I believe that will need to go into the report.”

“Right, of course,” Athelstan says, getting up himself. “I’m more than happy to help set up the masking wards while we wait for the disposal team to arrive. What are we going with? Environmental contamination, or—”

Stiles coughs into his hand. “Well. Yeah. So…that’s a kanima, right, so not eldritch, so…Dad’s not gonna send a team, that’s—um, that’s part of the local rules. Local issue, locals handle. So…it’s kind of big.”

“Not my car,” Derek says.

“I got Laura with Mom, she says we can borrow the van if we can get it to the house,” Scott says, coming back up. He takes another look at the dead body.

“I think we’re still going to have to cut something off,” Peter says, also studying it.

“Ah,” Athelstan says, raising his hand. “Sorry? What do you mean, there won’t be a disposal team?”

* * *

Considering that no official University personnel are involved—neither Stiles nor Allison are acting in their capacity as students, and Stiles thinks Athelstan’s coming mostly because Ragnar and Lagertha insist on being involved—the ensuing body-disposal discussion is _very_ Miskatonic-esque. 

“There is one way to get rid of a kanima so that it does not rise again,” Lagertha says. “You burn it.”

“There isn’t anywhere with permits for that big of a fire within a twenty-mile drive,” Allison retorts. “Besides, we’ve got a Nemeton that’s already on edge _and_ a hunter that _you_ think might actually a rogue cultist interested in the Nemeton, so how you think we’re going to burn something that big without one of them noticing—”

Lagertha sighs. “We can cut him smaller. If you do not want to do it, I will. I have done it before.”

“You did not cut him _that_ much smaller,” Ragnar mutters. That earns him a look that Stiles would rank right up there with the best of Melissa’s ‘oh, no, you didn’t’ expressions, but Ragnar stands his ground and gives her a flat stare back. “Yes, but Aslaug never tried to kill me.”

“Neither did he,” Lagertha says slowly. “Not truly.”

The two of them continue to stare at each other, while the tension grows so thick that you could trap a shoggoth in it; Athelstan obviously has some idea of going on, and even more obviously wishes he didn’t. Still, he’s weirdly unwilling to interrupt the standoff, even though from the little Stiles has seen, the other two are likely to listen. 

The rest of them shift around with varying degrees of impatience and discomfort, until finally Scott’s peacemaking little heart can’t take it anymore. He coughs into his hand, pauses, and then, frowning, coughs louder.

“Hey,” Derek says, and then immediately pulls a hacksaw across part of the dead kanima’s tail; the resulting screechy noise makes everyone’s head turn. “Listen, whatever old vendetta this is dragging up, can you hash it out after the body’s gone? Because I don’t want to get stuck in jail while you work it out.”

“Jail,” Lagertha repeats, making it a disapproving interrogative.

“Well, we have magical camo up but we can’t do this forever. Eventually someone’s going to want to get into the parking lot and if we don’t let them, they’ll call the cops,” Allison points out. “And some of them don’t like us, and they’re not going to stop to figure out whose fault it is.”

Ragnar snorts and does a full-body eye-roll in a way that Stiles has never seen before, and between Allison and the Hales, he’s been living with some people who are effusively (albeit on the negative side of the spectrum) dedicated to body language. It’s like the guy goes boneless and sort of hypnotic in a way that approaches non-Euclidean curvature, and then before you realize it, he’s halfway to the kanima body with an ax in hand.

Derek got a little distracted too, and he starts back, lips pulling into a snarl, when Ragnar does a half eye-roll and just swings the ax up and down, neatly splitting the kanima’s tail off in one blow. So…sure, werewolves are supernaturally strong and Ragnar had gravity working in his favor, and he _still_ made that look like knocking a rib off the babybacks. 

“Is that a pocket dimension?” Allison murmurs, looking at the ax, because yeah, also, that.

“No, I didn’t pick up any twist in space-time,” Stiles says after a moment’s thought.

“Okay, look, that takes care of a couple feet but there’s still the rest of it,” Derek says.

Ragnar looks up at him, then down at the kanima, and then shrugs and walks around. He cranes his head this and that way before settling, and reaches down for the kanima’s foreleg. Then pauses as Derek moves.

“Good, your clothes will stay clean,” he says, lifting his ax again.

“Um, look, on the whole question of how we take care of the chunks once they’re, well, chunked,” Stiles says, a little louder than strictly necessary, because Derek is getting that competitive look on his face and Peter’s being oddly aloof. “I feel like we should be considering non-flammable options.”

“I understand there’s a concern about resurrection so we can’t just dig a grave, but what if we accelerated the composition?” Athelstan says. Poor guy, he still hasn’t gotten anyone to explain to him what a kanima is and he obviously desperately feels the lack of information (a weird trait for someone in their line of study, but Stiles will take that over imperious idiocy any day). “So long as we stay outside of the Nemeton’s exposure radius, that shouldn’t—should that even require University paperwork?”

“I thought that that kind of spell is categorized as eldritch,” Allison says. “Isn’t it a form of time-interference?”

“Also, the original Cthulhic incursion had a footprint that’s five miles bigger than the Nemeton’s current radius, so we’d have to drive all the way into the next town’s limits to avoid any chance of Tindalosian intercepts,” Stiles reluctantly tells Athelstan.

Who makes a sympathetic face. “Oh, that makes sense…chemical bath?”

“Then we’d have to tell Alan and we sort of…didn’t mention that they’d be in town,” Scott says, nodding at Ragnar and Lagertha and looking a little unhappy about it. “Alan’s the local druid and he can’t apply for high enough Miskatonic clearance to know without it conflicting with his druid oaths. He’s also the only one with a metal tub that big.”

“Would a concrete pit require paperwork with your university?” Lagertha asks Stiles, in the kind of neutral tone that could mean she’s being sarcastic or plotting his eventual demise or genuinely interested and until the very moment she springs it on him, he’ll never know.

Which is when Peter’s body warmth suddenly appears at Stiles’ back. “I don’t think we need to trouble Miskatonic with a private quarrel,” he says smoothly. His little pause just drives home how supremely considerate he’s being. “In terms of first principles, we both know that burning a kanima is preferable only because it ensures that the body parts cannot be reunited.”

Lagertha purses her lips, while behind her, Ragnar silently draws closer. “What are you proposing?”

“I think we only really need to worry about the critical part,” Peter says. “The rest can be disposed of through alternative means—Scott, your ghoul friends perhaps can help?”

“Well, but then we’d have to ship it to them and that’d mean we have to apply for—” Allison starts.

“Oh, yeah, I think they could. Caitlin says they’ll do pick-ups,” Scott says, completely missing the way that Allison bites her lip. “But it’s kind of expensive…”

Ragnar grins. “We can pay. It is our problem.”

“But what are you proposing?” Lagertha asks again. This whole time, she hasn’t taken her eyes off of Peter. “I have known ghouls. If you are friendly with them, they will not mind not knowing who it is so long as they know what it is. But even they cannot pretend if you give them the—”

“Yes, well, we’ll burn the head,” Peter says a little impatiently. “I’ll grant you that. I’m just saying that there’s no reason why that can’t be the _only_ thing we burn, and I don’t think we need to rely on Deaton or Melissa for that. At that point it’s small enough that we don’t need to take it anywhere near the Miskatonic facilities.”

“So what, were you thinking we’re going to use the firepit?” Derek says. Then his eyes widen. “We’re going to use the _firepit_? We don’t even know the guy!”

Peter’s eye twitches. “Derek, you don’t even live there anymore. Neither of us do.”

“I know, but it’s still—okay. Okay, fine, it probably is the only place. But it’s just…we _use_ that,” Derek says, rapidly dropping to a mumble. “For parties. We cooked on it. We _still_ cook with it.”

Not that that saves him from Ragnar being very, very entertained, with all those big white teeth. “If it helps you know him, we could tell you about him while we wait for the ashes.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, deciding it’s time somebody cut this short and made some calls. And fine, he’s got no actual authority to stand on whatsoever, but he can tell where this is going and at this rate the sheriff is going to drive up into an _Evil Dead_ setup and totally not get the appeal. “Okay, fine, we’ll dismember and take the head over to the Hale—”

“You’re telling Laura,” Derek says to Peter, who can’t hold back the eye-roll.

“—and the rest of it, we’ll hold in a secure freezer—”

“Were you just assuming we’d use Dad’s? And have _Caitlin_ go there?” Allison says to Scott, with a pointed enough tone that he gets he did something wrong.

“—until the ghouls can arrange a pick-up,” Stiles doggedly finishes. “Sounds like a plan. Anything else?”

Athelstan raises his hand, then looks embarrassed when that makes everyone look at him. He still clears his throat. “Yes, I just wanted to ask—what about the hunter? Shouldn’t we make sure he’s not, er, watching? I assume this firepit is out in the open, and if he’s sneaking about looking for mutated specimens, I don’t know if he might…want to investigate? The place you’re suggesting—there was a ‘Hale property’ listed as one of the Cthulhic exposure sites.”

“It was just cultists so really low-level, that’s why the University wasn’t interested after they scrubbed the place, but then again, if this guy’s entry-level, he might not know that,” Stiles thinks out loud. “We probably should figure out where he is.”

Derek raises his hand.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Scott says. “We know he’s been getting friendly with the sheriff and if the sheriff thinks it’s you, he’ll just arrest you as soon as the guy calls him.”

“Well, we can’t go either, if we’re going to be packing Dad’s freezer chest,” Allison says, still sounding annoyed over Scott’s unsolicited Caitlin mention.

Scott looks confused. “You know she doesn’t _like_ me, right? She just likes talking about their composting business. Not a lot of people want to hear about it.”

Which in turn completely floors Allison, but from past experience, Stiles knows that’s not going to last long. “Okay, the plan,” he starts.

“We could find him,” Ragnar says.

Lagertha nods in agreement. “It does not sound that hard, and your sheriff will not know who we are. But this is your territory—we will not do it if you do not want us to.”

She’s purring a little, suddenly pleased about something, and Peter sucks his breath, which is a _huge_ tell from him, and it’s all that Stiles can do to not immediately turn around and check the other man’s expression (Peter’s already going to be mad at himself for it, no need to draw a big Yellow Sign over it to trap him in his shame). And honestly…Stiles’ first impulse is to just ask why the _hell_ they have to deal with pack politics right now.

“I think we’re jumping ahead,” Allison, of all people, says. “So far this guy’s just poked around, he hasn’t actually attacked anyone. So I don’t think we need to go find him, I just think we need to keep him away from the Hale house. Besides, it’s your body. You’re going to want to see this out. Don’t you? Or did you want to ask us to handle it for you?”

She says, chin slightly raised, turning to fully face Lagertha, which in werewolf language is just a couple fangs and glowy eyes short of ‘come at me.’ Okay, so maybe she’s not actually coming in with the save.

“Right, then, let’s discuss decapitation,” Athelstan breaks in, loudly, with a hand-clap that his expression says he knows is completely unnecessary but he’s going to go ahead anyway. “Much as I hate to ascribe any sort of utility to the West methods—”

“Yeah, no, if we’re going to make sure that all the viability gets destroyed with the head, reverse West is definitely the way to go,” Stiles says, because whatever nervous mannerisms are on the table, he is definitely aligned with anything that will get this out of all of the psycho-societal minefields and firmly back to objective territory they can all agree on: this guy’s head needs to come off.

In retrospect, he really shouldn’t have been so concerned about how they were going to come off to visitors. It’s not _really_ Miskatonic or Brichester; they’re just extra layers, but the foundation of this meeting was always going to be one and only one thing. 

* * *

“Everybody has a huge, freshly-defleshed, very pointy and sturdy bone to pick with everyone else, don’t they?” Stiles asks Scott the second he gets his buddy off on their own.

He’d initially planned on having this discussion with Peter or Derek, and not just because he’s dating them, but also because on the risk-assessment system he’s been developing for Beacon Hills situations, Peter getting blindsided by another werewolf is…kind of the equivalent of someone trying to break into Miskatonic’s library vaults to read the unexpurgated _Necronomicron_. Sure, you stopped it, but it’s just a prelude to Yog-Sothoth trying to descend out of the skies to reunite with its half-human vector on the way to consuming all of humanity.

Unfortunately, even after they’d settled on a plan and even a strategy for dismemberment, the bickering hadn’t stopped. Allison had pointed out that the body was going to need all the limbs removed to fit in a standard freezer chest—fair—and then had gotten into an argument with Lagertha about bagging the ends, because there’s apparently a controversy in the werewolf-hunter community about whether kanima venom exists only in the fangs or if claws can spread it too. And when Scott had very politely suggested that they just double-bag anyway, since it couldn’t hurt, he’d earned himself a look from Allison that had clearly screamed out for intervention.

Anyway, Peter and Derek look busy with a three-way contest with Ragnar over who can tote the biggest kanima limb. As far as werewolf behavior goes, that sort of thing looks like it could break out into a brawl at any time, but it’s actually a reasonably peaceful displacement activity (at least with respect to Derek; with Peter it’s just another sign that something is really off but Peter’s insecurities usually have a slow enough burn that the intervention can come later, provided Stiles doesn’t mind feeling like a crappy boyfriend). So Stiles comes up with an excuse to get Scott to help him with making sure all the bloodstains are off the pavement, and drags his friend as far from the others as he can.

“I don’t know,” Scott says, still forlornly staring over his shoulder at Allison. He absently holds onto Stiles’ phone while Stiles carries out a few scrubbing spells. “Do you think she’s really mad at me?”

Stiles holds back his sigh. His friendship muscles are admittedly a long way from normal (although for all its craziness, Beacon Hills has made him flex those way more than eight years adjacent to or enrolled in Miskatonic has), but he’s pretty sure that doing a spot diagnosis on Scott’s grasp of reality isn’t going to help. “I don’t know if it’s really you. I think it's more like the overall vibe going on, where everybody’s kind of defending their own but it’s so tightly matrixed that the overlaps are causing unpredictable—um.”

“No, it’s okay, I get what you’re trying to say,” Scott says, mustering up a smile. He holds it for a second, then shifts his weight a little. “Um. I mean…I think. You’re saying that this is more about her being stressed out by other things, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, look, I’m not saying—either way—that what you and Caitlin talk about looks—I don’t think that’s relevant. I do think it might _not_ be the best idea right now to introduce a third set of societal norms?” Stiles says. The blood’s gone, so’s the guts…he takes his phone back and does a scan for other traces. When it comes up zero, he turns his phone to screensaver and shoves it into his pocket. “I mean, right now just trying to sort out whether the werewolf interactions are geographically differentiated or whether the fuckwithery is happening on a purely personal level—hey, what?”

Scott lets go of Stiles’ elbow but still doesn’t move to fall behind Stiles to head back to the others. “Aren’t we going to cover that up?”

“But we di—oh. Right.” Stiles resists the urge to slap a hand over his face, as he stares at the giant furrows and ripped-up chunks of turf and asphalt strewn around. And he _helped_ his dad rewrite the part of the Security manual on post-incident environmental remediation to remind people it’s not just magical traces that need scrubbing. “Okay, we really need to get those limbs out of here, I think I can get away with a small—”

“Ah, sorry, would it be better if I did it?” comes a tentative voice. Athelstan, rubbing his hands against his hips, and without his pair of werewolves. “We’ve got to file a report anyway, I don’t mind appending something on localized terrain anomalies.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, that’s not a bad idea,” Stiles says, registering only the first half of the sentence. Then he picks up on the rest, as well as the identity of who’s making the suggestion, and grimaces. “Well, wait, but—”

Scott interrupts by making a startled noise and pushing past Stiles to jog back towards the main group, who _should_ be working on solving the problem of the most efficient way to stack plastic-wrapped body parts in the back of an SUV, but who instead seem to be in another standoff. This time it looks like Peter and Ragnar were saying something to each other, and not with particularly friendly smiles, so Stiles starts forward too.

“Honestly, if it’s less offensive to everyone if I just open up a rift for us to toss the pieces, then I’m willing to do it and damn the visa,” Athelstan says, with a surprising amount of frustration. Which is real; when Stiles looks over, Athelstan is repeatedly looping one hand through the air to keep the bubble of reality around him stable, while pushing the heel of his other hand against his temple and that is _exactly_ what Stiles looks like when trying to book Library carrels during finals. “I know, I know, the Hounds, but with what I took away from Averoigne I think I can manage it. If all else fails I’ll just call my Dean, and put up with his—with him.”

“So it really is stable?” Stiles blurts out. Then feels his own migraine coming on. “Ignore that.”

Athelstan glances at him, and for a second Stiles thinks the man’s going to call out how many inter-university exchange rules that just violated (not to mention invoke the medical confidentiality clauses, and any university who admits pre-transition Deep Ones is Not Joking about those). But then he just sighs. “Well, stable in what sense? In the sense that I’m still a singular personality and still identify myself as human?”

“Those are kind of two of the three pillars of all the psych screens,” Stiles says, then winces again. “Sorry. Look, I’m not usually this—if I want to insult you, I’m going to do it on purpose.”

“Oh, I didn’t take any offense, I just…” Athelstan lets out a tired exhale, staring at the others. Then grimaces and mutters a quick cantrip as the ground ripples slightly under their feet. “I always had very low scores on the tests for propensity to megalomania. Very low. To the point that they actually did secondary screens a few times to check that I wasn’t also _susceptible_ to sociopaths. So of course I go to Averoigne to study xenobotany, which isn’t even central to their Cthulhic manifestations, and happen to be the one who comes back with a Yog-Sothoth augmentation.”

“It’s kind of cool,” Stiles has to point out. “I mean, sure, the control thing looks like a work in progress and I’m not saying that that’s easy, but I have over a hundred body-disposal SOPs to worry about. It would be nice to just have one plus make sure the Hounds don’t eat me.”

Athelstan snorts, in a friendly way, and then looks at Stiles. “Well, but you do have a quite decent team here.”

Right then, Scott shoves Derek out of the way as Ragnar, what looks like the tail on one shoulder, swings rapidly around. Then Scott grabs the tail from Ragnar and pushes half of it into the back of Athelstan’s rental SUV before stopping. Still holding the part that’s not in the car, he reaches into his pocket, digs out a packet of tissues, and hands it to Ragnar for the new slick that’s dripping down Ragnar’s chest. Both Ragnar and Derek stare irritably at the back of Scott’s head until Allison, who’s using a spare crossbow bolt as a pointer for some reason, gestures sharply at them.

“Yeah. I mean, they are. I know they might seem sort of…right now, but—look, we got a body, can we just call truce till this is over?” Stiles asks.

No immediate answer, which at first he assumes is down to how inept and whiny he sounds, but when he looks at Athelstan, that’s not the other man’s expression at all. Instead Athelstan seems to be struggling against some sort of impulse. He opens his mouth and leans towards Stiles as if to say something, then stops and looks back. Then pauses again. Then, looking as if he’s marching into one of the University clinics for an urgent-curse consult, he finally gets it out: “ _What_ are they showing off about?” he hisses. “I don’t understand this at all. I know werewolves are supposed to be highly territorial, but this doesn’t feel like it’s about land, and we’re both over here and not in danger and they’re _still_ doing it.”

Stiles also does a suffocating-fish impression for a few seconds. Then, as Lagertha icily accepts a backpack to cover up the plastic-wrapped head, his sense of priorities kicks in. 

“Look, we gotta talk about this,” he says. “Seriously. Because I am maxing out on my werewolf knowledge at this point, and—”

“Could I get a bibliography?” Athelstan says. Then blushes. “Sorry, I just—I’m still boning up on the area. Although if there’s anything you have on kanimas you wouldn’t mind sharing too…”

“What? But—” Stiles gestures. “Aren’t you three…”

Athelstan pauses, then takes a deep breath. “Yes, but that is very recent and I didn’t know any werewolves very well before them, and I—am _completely_ at sea here. I’ll admit it, I have no idea what’s the matter with them. Do you?”

“Uh. Oh. That’s…” Stiles shakes himself (somewhere, his dad is both shaking his head and muttering that the least Stiles could do is internalize the lectures) “…okay. Gotta talk. Psychological and cultural stuff to analyze. But first, let’s get the body out. Give everyone something to do, get them actually doing it, and then that’ll leave some brain space for the analytical stuff. That work for you?”

“Yes,” Athelstan says. He blinks a few times, then seems to settle himself. When he speaks again, he sounds much more determined. “Yes, it does. Right, then, how do you want to handle the travel?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Cthulhu Mythos does support a version of the reptilian people, thanks to Lovecraft's friendship with Robert E. Howard, who created them for his _Conan_ series. However, unlike TW's kanima (which essentially is a mutated werewolf with mental/emotional-identity issues), the Valusian serpent-people are an antediluvian, highly-advanced civilization with tech, magic, and mind-control powers who are bent on overthrowing humanity. So there's a disconnect on type of threat here.
> 
> Quint has sensibly decided to go nap in Scott and Allison's closet, for anyone who's wondering. He knows to stay out of the passive-aggressive crossfire.
> 
> West is referencing Lovecraft’s Herbert West character.


	11. Chapter 11

Even with his lack of familiarity with werewolf culture, Athelstan realizes that they can’t just drive up to the resident alpha’s family home with a dismembered reptilian in their possession, but after they’ve jammed all the parts in, there’s hardly room for two in his rental SUV, let alone three. The security spellwork is keyed to him so he has to be inside, but the locals want their own representative along too. Under the circumstances, the most neutral party is deemed to be Stiles and the Nemeton’s chosen medium.

“I think you can just call him Quint,” Stiles says, hunched up in the front passenger’s seat and typing madly on his mobile. “‘Chosen medium’ is a mouthful and anyway, he’s only that a couple times a month, on average, and the rest of the time he just kind of does his thing. Take a left up ahead.”

‘Quint,’ who is perched on the dashboard and carefully deshelling a walnut, nods in agreement.

“Right, then, Quint it is,” Athelstan says, with a cheerfulness even he can tell is forced. “So—”

Quint abruptly leaps towards Athelstan, who instinctively throws one arm to cover his face. Then frantically ducks and grabs at the wheel again, getting it just as—headlights.

“Other side! Other side!” The wheel is jerked out of Athelstan’s hand again, straightening the car just as the other one passes with a loud blast from the horn. Stiles shouts a graphic insult concerning the driver’s likely rate of genetic degeneration once housed in a subterranean cavern, then sits back. He gives Athelstan a wide-eyed look before suddenly wincing and twisting around to lower his window. “We’re fine! We’re fine! Go back to stalking!”

The car is in fact still moving. Not very fast since Athelstan took his foot off the gas, but it is. He gingerly puts his hands back on the wheel and taps the accelerator.

“Sorry,” Stiles mutters, still a little breathless.

“Quite all right, it was the wrong side,” Athelstan mutters back. He resists the urge to thump his head into the wheel. “I don’t…travel very much. Well, till recently.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. He reaches towards Athelstan’s…no, he’s retrieving Quint, who bops from the back of Stiles’ hand onto the dashboard as if nothing had happened. Walnut still in paw. “Well, it’s only a little down this road now.”

Athelstan nods tightly. “Not much to hit either, I suppose.”

“Aside from our werewolf entourage, yeah,” Stiles says, back to mumbling as the window on his side slowly rises. He…yes, he’s slouching, as if trying not to be visible to someone outside. “Okay, so what we’ve got, we’ve got something about burying your own enemies and not letting other people do it, we’ve got what it means to take out another pack’s enemy, we’ve got…there was a third one…”

Oh, possibly he’s worried about lip-reading. The privacy wards on the car should keep them from being overheard but they’re the brightest-lit object for what seems like miles around. Athelstan also scrunches down. “Do you think we should distinguish between taking out another pack’s enemy with their knowledge and doing it because you’ve been asked to? It did seem like there might have been some space between the two, although like I said, I’m new to this.”

“Trust me, you’re gonna be ‘new’ to it for a while,” Stiles mutters. Then he grimaces and rubs at the side of his face. “Look, for the record, Derek, Peter, and I are in a stable, loving, long-term relationship, or at least as long-term as we can make it with all of the stuff that’s going on—”

“Congratulations,” Athelstan says, inanely. Perhaps learning werewolf culture is premature, he can’t help thinking. He could use some basic human socialization first. “That is—I’m—I’m very—I’d like to know how you did that.”

Which is going from awkward to downright offensive, and it’s a genuine surprise to him when Stiles just lets out a snort. “Yeah, some days so would I,” he says, before pushing himself back up. “I was getting that vibe too, I’ll split that out as two-a and two-b, but I still feel like there was a third one…”

Not lip-reading, just regular posture. Athelstan’s back is starting to cramp so he straightens up as well, and then squints as a large dark mass starts to emerge out of the darkened woods. “Whose knowledge is decisive?”

“I don’t know if that’s just _werewolves_ ,” Stiles says. “Oh, hey, okay, we’re here—whoa!”

Athelstan winces. “Sorry, was I not supposed to stop yet? I just thought—should I just drive up?”

“Um. Right, so, um, probably…” Stiles rights himself, chewing on his lip, and then sighs and rolls the window down again. “I don’t even know anymo—hey! So what did Laura say?”

“She’s not home!” comes Derek’s voice from somewhere behind the car. “She’s not going to make it back in time and we said we’d handle it, and you don’t want Cora around anyw—”

“Just drive it around to the back and park it by the cellar doors,” Peter calls out, from Stiles’ side of the car.

Stiles rolls the window back up. “That’s on the left side of the house,” he says. “Don’t worry about the lawn, they have to reseed it anyway after this thing from last week and oh, that’s it—this whole thing where we can’t just take multiple cars, we’ve gotta do one so the rest of them can do their stalky thing through the woods like they’re looking out for us but really they are _totally_ showing off how stalky they can be to each other. That one.”

“I actually thought it was about not having an obvious caravan through town that’d attract the attention of the police,” Athelstan says. “That seems reasonable.”

Stiles blinks.

“That is, until Allison stated that she would take her car instead of Scott’s bike, for reasons that I don’t quite follow except that I gathered there are two ways to this place, and the one we’re taking is the one that’s relatively untraveled, while the one she’s taking goes right by the police station,” Athelstan adds. He carefully turns the car off the driveway and into the yard. “I might not know which side of the road to go on, but we do have the same Google Maps overseas.”

“Yeah, that’s not…I mean, I think they’ll work it out, it’ll be Scott and Allison to the end of the world, back-to-back against the ravening horde. But also, sometimes, Allison’s good at cluing me into werewolf tics because she’s kind of like one,” Stiles sighs. He leans forward and points so that Athelstan can make out the cellar doors. “Okay, let’s get this head handled and then go talk Allison’s dad into housing some kanima limbs for a few days.”

“Why doesn’t that matter?” Athelstan asks as he parks and Stiles bends over to retrieve the packaged head from the floor. “If it matters that one pack is handling another pack’s fallen enemy, then wouldn’t it matter if—”

“Maybe Chris counts as neutral?” Stiles says, grunting a little as he wedges the oblong shape onto his knees. “I mean, he’s a hunter, he’s also not dating any werewolves, and I think sometimes that dating Melissa means he’s not technically under Allison’s purview anymore but that’s kind of an awkward thing to pry into, and I was gonna—prioritize werewolves first—”

Athelstan puts the keys away and then turns around to help Stiles with the head, only to yelp and jerk back at the sight of glowing eyes right in front of the passenger window. 

Stiles twists to face him and he grimaces and waves his hand out of sheer embarrassment. The other man turns the other way, then sighs. He moves the head under one arm and lifts his other hand as if to open his door…and then stops. “Hey, so…am I actually neutral? Or do you think they’re categorizing magic-workers together—because werewolf packs do have the Emissary role, and so if I hand Derek this head—”

“Right,” Athelstan says, echoing Stiles’ sigh. This is getting a little ridiculous, but on the other hand, this is patently not the right time to break out for a sociological analysis. He has a feeling…and is proven right when he turns to his window and finds Ragnar standing right outside, smiling and gesturing. “Well, hand it over here and just add that to the list of questions.”

“Yep,” Stiles mutters. 

He hefts the head up over the gear-shaft and starts to push it across, then abruptly huffs out a breath. The head drops suddenly and Athelstan grabs at it, but not before it bangs dully against the gear-shaft. Athelstan winces in sympathy, then remembers what it is and—pushing aside the thought that the sympathy is misplaced, he tries to get his hands under it for better leverage.

“Sorry,” Stiles says. “There’s this piece sticking out and I just almost hit myself in the throat.”

“Oh, careful,” Athelstan says. “Here, I’ve got—”

“Okay—”

The two of them lift, more or less at the same time, and get the head halfway towards Athelstan before Stiles lets out a strangled noise and Athelstan, wondering _why_ the damn thing is so heavy, agrees by hastily lowering the head back so they can balance it on the gear-shaft.

“Seriously,” Stiles mutters, apparently to himself. Then he twitches as Derek taps on his window. “We’re fine!”

“Athelstan?” Ragnar calls. “Athelstan?”

“One second!” Athelstan says without turning. He locks eyes with Stiles. “I think one more—”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, nodding.

They heave it up again, and this time manage to get it completely across the gear-shaft. The balance of the weight shifts onto Athelstan, who too late realizes that he’s not—well, honestly, positioning alone isn’t going to fix this. He just doesn’t have the muscle to take on the entire thing himself.

To his credit, Stiles seems to realize this as well, and awkwardly levers himself onto one knee, keeping hold of his head. However, now the head is hanging from his fingers rather than him pushing up on its bottom, and he’s not really taking much weight off of Athelstan. “Oh, shit—”

“Athelstan, open the door,” Ragnar says sharply.

Does he sound _panicked_ , Athelstan has just enough time to wonder, and then the entire car suddenly shakes, as if—

“You can’t just yank the door off, the whole car’s been University-proofed!” Stiles yells, scrambling over the head and part of Athelstan’s knee. “Like literally you can’t—sorry, sorry, just let me—”

Athelstan can’t really answer as the entire weight of the head is on his chest and all of his energy is directed towards resisting its efforts to cave in his ribs. He vaguely registers Stiles pulling at one side of it, but that’s really just rolling it, it isn’t actually removing the object—

—and then the solid door behind him isn’t solid anymore, and in fact, Athelstan appears to be falling. The head is a bit slower, thanks to its greater inertia, so his lungs have just enough time to expand into a wheeze before he’s seized from behind and dragged the rest of the way from the car. 

“Hey—” Stiles is yelping.

“Got it!” Scott says, in an oddly cheerful way.

Ragnar, apparently in an attempt to help refill Athelstan’s lungs, gently bounces him a few times before setting him on his feet. The man peers into Athelstan’s face, then draws back; his fingers stay tucked just inside Athelstan’s shirt-collar, lovely and cool and…oh, he’s drawing out the pain.

He is also still worried. “What were you doing?” he hisses.

“Trying to get out of the car,” Athelstan says, quite honestly.

“Yeah, without testing all of the protective magic we just relayered per his actual medical records,” Stiles mutters. When Athelstan glances back, he finds Stiles hanging from the driver’s-side seatbelt—although not for long, as Peter slides in to help him out.

Sliding, because Scott is somewhat in the way, holding the head with one arm. His other hand is on top of it, but apparently just to help steady the thing. “Okay, so now that we’re here—”

“I think you need to give it back, Scotty,” Stiles says, his eyes flicking past Scott.

Scott turns around and then blinks sharply at finding Lagertha standing before him, a rather tensely blank expression on her face. She simply extends her hands, and after a moment’s hesitation, Scott hands her the head.

“Where is this firepit?” Lagertha asks in a flat tone.

Derek’s just come around the front end of the car, moving in so that Ragnar steps back, taking Athelstan with him. “Over there,” he says, jerking his chin, as he reaches back to unhook Stiles’ shirt-tails from something inside the car. “Woodpile is—”

“I see it,” Ragnar says, tone similarly flat. 

Then he and Lagertha abruptly turn to face the same direction. “Oh, that’s Allison,” Scott says, waving at the house. A second later, a tiny flare of light appears and moves in a waving motion back. “Okay, then, I guess we should get started. What do you want us to do?”

Ragnar turns back to look at Scott, an expression of mixed incredulity and amusement on his face. He mutters something in Norwegian to Lagertha, who tips her chin up, smiling tolerantly.

“That’s a really dick thing to say when he’s just trying to help,” Derek says, and then irritably stalks forward as Ragnar and Lagertha both shoot him startled looks.

“Let’s just…let’s just do the fire and get that out of the way,” Stiles says.

To Athelstan, although that takes a moment to register, as does the fact that Stiles seems to be waiting for his agreement. “Yes, let’s…”

Lagertha is already heading towards the firepit, while Ragnar lags behind until Athelstan starts walking. He’s still got his hand on Athelstan’s shoulder, though he’s not using it to hold Athelstan back or to support himself.

“Wait, so…you know Norwegian all of a sudden?” Stiles hisses, skittering past them to catch up with Derek.

“No, I learned it a while ago. Stunt guy on a shoot was from there,” Derek mutters, though it’s still loud enough to drift back. “And also was an asshole. I picked it up so I could figure out when I needed to kick him back in place.”

“I thought we were trying to not challenge each other,” Athelstan whispers, seeing how Ragnar’s eyeing the pair of them.

Ragnar blinks, removing the contemplative element of his expression, and then glances at Athelstan. “I am not responding. I am listening.”

“I think you are responding,” Athelstan says before he can stop himself.

That earns him a sharp second look from Ragnar. Then, as Athelstan instinctively lags in response—he thinks he does well to not immediately cringe—Ragnar’s expression slides into something more concerned. The man swings his arm and then puts it back down, as if he’d been about to loop it over Athelstan’s shoulders and then changed his mind, keeping it to just the hand on the one shoulder.

“I am…I am trying,” Ragnar says, lowering his voice. His eyes shift to…Peter, who’s strolling along a few meters from them, facing Stiles and Derek but certainly seeming in no hurry to catch up to those two. “This is not easy. We—I think you can tell, we read each other and…it is not easy to ignore that. Even if what we are reading is not what the person might want to do, but it is still what they _could_ do.”

“I can understand that. And I appreciate that you’re trying, too,” Athelstan says. “But could you—can I just ask—”

“Okay, we’ve got the wood!” Scott calls out.

He and Allison, who’s joined him at the firepit, are dropping armfuls of split logs at the edge. The firepit itself is…considerably bigger and more structured than Athelstan was expecting, able to easily accommodate all of them around it with room to spare. It’s also no mere bare spot with a circle of stones, but has an actual concrete-lined pit surrounded by broad flat stones. And the pit is large enough that when Lagertha unwraps the head and lets it drop in, it’s completely below the pit rim.

“Didn’t we want to build up the starter first?” Allison mutters. “Or are we trying to barbecue it now?”

“You have brought the wood,” Lagertha says. “So I assumed that is what you were thinking. Or did you think that we can burn this hot enough with just wood?”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I just—I can’t. I just can’t,” Stiles says. He goes up to the edge of the pit and turns so that he’s more or less facing everyone, with a wild enough expression that Athelstan catches Peter making an aborted movement towards him. “I know we have a body to get rid of and believe me, normally I’d be all about prioritizing homicide cover-ups but not if we’re talking an appreciable rise in the probability of another homicide and I think we are! Aren’t we? So what’s the thing we’re all not talking about but we’re _totally_ throwing shit-fits over? Because also? Totally a werewolf thing. Right?”

Everyone is silent. And…silent. As the seconds drag on, Athelstan’s own patience gives way and he edges out to survey the expressions: Derek and Peter look deeply uncomfortable, with Derek glancing repeatedly at Peter; Allison appears more confused; Ragnar and Lagertha have…oddly similar expressions to Derek and Peter, except tending less towards guilt and more towards embarrassment.

“Um, Stiles,” Scott says. “I’m not sure I know what—”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t know, we never told you,” Derek mutters. “Guess she didn’t either.”

Allison bridles. “Scott doesn’t _try_ to stick to traditions that don’t make sense anymore, just because he’s an alpha.”

“Wait, so you know?” Stiles says, wheeling on her. 

“Stiles,” Peter says, stepping forward with his hand raised.

“Hey, wait,” Scott says, also moving towards Stiles. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean—”

“I think we’d just like to know,” Athelstan says, loudly, and then everyone looks at him.

Of course they do, that was the entire point, he tells himself, and then forcibly shakes off his cringing. He almost stops again when he glimpses Ragnar and Lagertha both looking as if they’d like to leap in front of him—but staying silent certainly isn’t going to stop them from doing that.

“We were talking, a bit, on the drive over,” he goes on. He has to pause and swallow awkwardly, as his mouth has suddenly dried out. “About everyone’s behavior. Because—well, I’m not particularly that well-versed in werewolf culture, I realize that, but even to me it seemed like there’s a lot of unexplained tension—”

“And I think I’m a _little_ knowledgeable about werewolves these days—anyway, I know werewolves here, and there is _definitely_ unexplained tension,” Stiles snaps. “And there’s a point where you can tell me all you want that you don’t wanna fight, but if you’re pushing the other side to just throw down so you can jump in—”

“Stiles, that is _not the plan_ ,” Peter says sharply. He angles his body slightly, looking very intently at Stiles, and…just as Athelstan can see Stiles start to waver, ruins it by throwing an irritated look at Ragnar. “I have absolutely no intention of picking a fight with vagabond alphas who—”

Ragnar blows his cheeks out and stares up at the sky. “We are here to burn this head, yes? Because you do not want it found?”

“We’re here because we’re trying to keep everything here from getting to be so much of a mess that Miskatonic sends in a full team and just handles everything,” Athelstan says, irritated himself. He’s at the point he doesn’t even feel particularly guilty when Ragnar starts and stares at him. “Can I just ask something, just for my edification? What does it mean if one of them touches that?”

Ragnar opens his mouth, then shuts it. Then begins to point into the pit.

“Yes, the head, I meant that, why is it suddenly so… _meaningful_ if they take control of it, or responsibility for it, which I think is what’s underpinning all of this rowing,” Athelstan says impatiently.

“Yeah, exactly. Why the hell is who gets to get rid of that an actual pissing contest?” Stiles adds. “I mean, really? Wouldn’t you be glad that you don’t have to bother?”

Clearly not, from the looks on Ragnar’s and Lagertha’s faces—and on Peter’s, Derek’s, and Allison’s. Scott, on the other hand, seems just as confused as Athelstan and Stiles.

Then his expression changes. He sucks his breath, pauses to look uncertainly at the others, and then…it turns a little frustrated, Athelstan thinks, when he reaches Allison. She blinks, then moves as if to reach out, but Scott has already turned away from her with a sigh.

“Wait, I think…I think I can guess,” he says, rather heavily. “This is the same reason why you’re all so afraid of Mom, isn’t it? Because she knows where all the bodies go? Because it’s blackmail?”

Stiles makes an incredulous noise. “I thought they were scared of her because she will _take you out_.”

“Well…that is part of it,” Peter says, with clear reluctance. “Her knowing where to find all the enemies does help her do that.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense in this case,” Athelstan says. “There aren’t any pre-existing conflicts, so it’s not as if you can break the news to a connection of the man who’ll avenge him. You could report it to the local authorities but that seems self-defeating, given how it’ll expose the supernatural—”

Scott sighs again. “No, they’re worried about knowing where the body parts are. I mean, the _body parts_ are the actual issue.”

“But we’re getting rid of those! And anyway the whole point was taking it apart so nobody can bring this guy back! We already did that, it’s not like you can undo it with bone-glue!” Stiles says, throwing his arms about in frustration. “What else am I missing?”

“Oh,” Athelstan says at the same time. “Oh, well—curses.”

“Non-eldritch ones,” Derek says, sounding rather as if the words are being chiseled out of him.

“Yes, blood or bone or claw of your enemy,” Peter adds, looking oddly at Athelstan. “Which is admittedly rather pedestrian compared to Cthulhic workings, but…there are a number of necromantic schools devoted to such things. If you’re _familiar_ with that area.”

Athelstan winces and shifts backward, but it’s mostly out of habit these days. Actually, he’s quite annoyed at giving in to the urge, and perhaps that’s what powers him to retort, “Well, yes, I am, thanks to a past life, but I’m sure Stiles could easily find the relevant references in Miskatonic’s library. And since both of _us_ could deal with any such curse, why would you even try?”

“We were not going to,” Ragnar says.

“That wasn’t the _plan_ ,” Peter says at the same time, although it’s more to Stiles. “We were just concerned that—”

“Look, can we just agree that nobody actually wants to start something and stop waiting for someone to start?” Scott asks in a plaintive tone. “I mean, because nobody will. Because nobody wants to. Right?”

“Yeah, seriously, I think we’re all clear that everybody standing around here is very scary and powered and can really do some damage if we wanted to, no need to fight for acknowledgement over that,” Stiles mutters, turning around. He goes over to the wood Scott and Allison had dropped off and starts to pick out logs, irritation written into every movement.

Athelstan presses his lips together, then crosses to join the other man. He has to pass Lagertha to do it, and ignore her silent request of an expression, but…he does give her a cold shoulder, before toeing up a stick to grab. And does so knowingly.

“Oh, wait, I got some pinecones for starters,” Scott says, digging into his coat pockets. As he does, he steps away from Allison and towards Stiles and Athelstan. Then he pauses and glances back; his voice drops when he speaks again. “I don’t think the ghouls really look at it that way either, they’re just getting rid of it, and look, if Caitlin makes you nervous—”

“She doesn’t,” Allison mutters tightly, with a glance at the rest of them. Then, as Scott turns away from her, she sighs. “Well, not nervous, I just…that wasn’t what I meant, and can we just—we need to talk. But can we do it lat—”

Something leaps out of the darkness and lands in the pit with an attention-catching _splat_ noise. 

“That was a frog,” Lagertha says.

“Oh…oh, _no_ ,” Scott says, whirling around.

“Oh, shit,” Stiles says, dropping his log and bolting up onto his feet, as the other locals have similar reactions.

“There are more,” Ragnar says. Initially he seems rather nonplussed, but then he sees something in the darkness beyond the pit that makes his eyes visibly—as they’re glowing now—widen. 

He hisses and then he and Lagertha are suddenly at Athelstan’s side, each of them with a hand on Athelstan’s shoulder. “You must get up,” Lagertha says urgently, staring forward as the others start to run towards the house. “Get up. There are hundreds—”

“Oh, but—but the head—I thought you were worried—” Athelstan starts.

“It doesn’t matter.” Ragnar yanks Athelstan to his feet. Looks apologetic at Athelstan’s pained yelp, though that doesn’t stop him from literally sweeping Athelstan off the ground. “You matter. Come, we need to—”

“Wait! Wait, I think they’re done!” Stiles calls from where he and Peter are stooping over something near the house. Then he twists around to wave at Athelstan. “They’re not after you, they already ate!”

Ate?

“Stiles, I don’t think this is an entire body,” Peter says. “ _Damn_. Damn—no, they got away, you can see the trail there—into the woods…”

“The Nemeton!” Scott shouts.

“Wait,” Athelstan says. It’s not as if he can really stop Ragnar, but when he pushes on Ragnar’s shoulder, the man pauses. “Wait, if they need help—I want to go help them. If it doesn’t make you comfortable, you don’t have to, but I want you to let me down so I can.”

Ragnar grimaces. He vibrates in place, as if against an invisible tether, and then he sighs and puts Athelstan down. “We said we would come with you,” Lagertha says, helping to steady Athelstan. When he starts to ask if she’s sure, she puts her finger against his lips. “This is what we said. We would not have said if we did not mean it.”

“Well—all right,” Athelstan says, as Scott continues shouting, now about Quint. “But look, later—I want to know why you couldn’t just say that you were worried about curses. I study magic, I could have explained how I could handle that.”

Lagertha pauses, a strange, almost wistful look coming over her face. “But that _is_ why,” she says quietly. “You could. You shouldn’t.”

Athelstan wants to ask more—but then hears Stiles saying they’ve _got_ to call his father now. “I’m going to remember this and ask later,” he mutters, starting to jog over.

* * *

“Well, the good news is, it doesn’t look like we have to defrog the house again,” Stiles says. “The bad news is, we’ve got a guy who can grow LMDs out of mushrooms, and we don’t know where he is but based on these notes on his phone, he seems _really_ interested in the Nemeton.”

Stiles’ dad is silent for a moment. _“So this hunter…he grew a human-size working dummy out of mushrooms but he dropped his phone with all of his nefarious plans on it when the three-headed frogs went at the dummy.”_

“Yeah, _totally_ not a hunter, definitely Cthulhic cultist and Athelstan was saying earlier there might be a Leng connection with the mushrooms,” Stiles says. “You wanna tell Melissa? Scott’s trying to call her to deal with the cops, but—”

“Oh, I think I know exactly who this is,” Athelstan says. The disgusted look on his face, which clearly has nothing to do with the frog slime he’s rubbing off the thing he just picked up off the ground, says he completely knows who it is. “He’s not a cultist, he’s an academic—well, _former_ academic. And he’s not from Leng’s horticultural department, they didn’t even want to feed him to the _Cordyceps_ —he’s one of the batch they expelled—”

“Oh, _that_ g—” Stiles remembers they’re in the middle of an emergency, not a library gossip session, and shifts his phone off his shoulder “—hey, Dad, did you hear that—”

His father makes a noise like he’s pinching his nose and wishing they were back in Miskatonic where the town cops send him thank-you notes for taking over a scene. _“Hell, that guy. Great.”_

“Who is it?” Scott says sharply. Then he hunches his shoulders a little, apologetic, but he’s still not about to stand back. “If the Nemeton is in danger from him, shouldn’t we get over there? We don’t know where he is but we know what he wants, so—”

“No, no, he’s not actually after the Nemeton,” Athelstan says. He pulls a tissue out of his pocket, mutters over it, and then uses it to erase the slime from his fingers before handing the tweezers—that’s what he picked up—over to an encroaching Ragnar. “Well, that is, he _is_ , but he’s a fungi hunter and your Nemeton is trying to spawn.”

Scott looks even more alarmed. So does Quint, tail-tentacles anxiously shivering as he twitches up and down Scott’s shoulder. “He’s going for one of the saplings?”

“That’d explain what he’s doing over here,” Derek mutters. “Laura just got one for the living room.”

“I thought she said she was keeping it in the backyard,” Peter says. “She only caved because they talked all her little mentees into taking one as a ‘bonding exercise.’”

Derek makes a face. “Yeah, sure, that’s what she _said_. You remember her and the class gerbils in high school, don’t you?”

“He’s not going to want a sapling, those are clones, if I remember the briefing correctly,” Athelstan says. “They’re not unique enough. He’ll want something he can hybridize.”

“The acorns?” Scott says. Then winces, reaching up, as Quint lets off an alarmed chatter and bounces to the top of his head.

“But there would be a lot of acorns in the woods,” Ragnar says, looking at the trees around them. 

“And the Nemeton said they weren’t working anyway,” Scott says. He scuffles with Quint for a couple seconds, wincing repeatedly as the squirrel romps through his hair, still chattering. “Remember? It was complaining that they weren’t—”

Stiles slaps his hand to his face. Seriously, it’s the most basic rule of Cthulhic Studies: the villain is _always_ doing exactly what you think they are. “Gardening supplies. The acorns are sterile, because the Nemeton’s the only one of its kind and self-fertilization just means clones, but if you took two of them and potted them with a mutating factor—”

“So then we should be heading to the nearest rift site,” Athelstan says. When Stiles takes his hand off his face, he finds the other man madly typing away at his phone, transparent runes and sigils and other signs of transdimensional calculations wisping in and out of the air around him. “The sensible thing to do would be to leave town and then cast the spell, but given who we’re speaking about—”

“Yeah, right, but there are _two_ rift sites,” Stiles says, and then he turns around to face Scott. “Hey, is Quint going nuts because somebody’s at the Nemeton?”

“No, this isn’t his Nemeton panic, this is when he thinks—” Allison appears at Scott’s shoulder just in time to snatch Quint out of his hair. She quickly tosses the squirrel into her other hand, which is covered in a bandanna, and then semi-muffles Quint with that so she can produce a couple peanuts. He goes from startled to eerily focused on the peanuts. “We’re gonna find the guy and stop him, okay? Dad’s already headed to the tree just in case.”

Scott. She’s reassuring Scott, who takes a deep, shaky breath, and then lets it out with noticeably more confidence. “Sorry,” he mutters. He takes another breath and holds his hands out to take Quint back. “And I’m sorry we’re bothering your da—”

“We’re not, he cares just as much about keeping the peace and the Nemeton’s part of the peace,” Allison says. She’s a lot more aware of the rest of them, but after a flicked glance at Lagertha, visibly decides she’d rather just concentrate on Scott. “It’s not a bother, I just…look, sorry about earlier, I know nothing’s going on with Caitlin, I just—I just wish this came as easy to me as it does to you. I don’t even know why Miskatonic wanted me, you’re the one who’s making all the friends.”

_“Stiles,”_ goes Stiles’ phone, reminding him of his own father. _“Stiles, did Athelstan say he knows what ritual this asshole’s going to try for?”_

“You think it’s Chaugnar Faugn?” Stiles says to Athelstan, who’s still on his phone. “Or Shub-Niggurath?”

Athelstan chews absently at his lip. “Ah…well, I suppose he could still try Chaugnar, but given how emphatically Leng deported him, you’d think he’d know better…but I don’t think it’ll be Shub-Niggurath either. Can’t give you a concrete reason yet, but my instincts just…”

“The only other rift site is the convention center, and that _was_ the site of an attempted mating between Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu,” Peter points out. “Which would match the goal better.”

That brings Athelstan’s head up with a sharp jerk. “Who in this plane of reality would be that idiotic?”

“Our old chemistry teacher,” Scott says. Quint nestled back on his shoulder, hand firmly clasped with Allison’s, that classic look of determination on his face. “Who’s dead, we don’t have to worry about him. But I don’t think the center has anything scheduled this week—I’m pretty sure Mom checked that when your dad mentioned this visit.”

“I think we should look at it,” Ragnar says, bringing attention back to him and Lagertha. “This center.”

“But what about your head? And all the body parts in the car?” Derek asks.

“This is important,” Lagertha says. She glances at Athelstan, who, after a moment’s bafflement, suddenly seems to understand and gives her a small nod. This one gesture clearly loosens her and Ragnar up. “More important. Where our enemies’ bones are does not matter if our world has been destroyed.”

The side of Ragnar’s eye spasms, but somehow, it seems more like a warning than a nervous tic. “We all agree there is nothing to that anyway. And if there is, we can take it up later. But right now we can leave the parts here.”

Derek glances at Peter, whose expression briefly blanks out. Then Peter hitches his shoulders in a little sigh and glances up at the sky. “I suppose we’ll have to take them, as I also agree, I’d rather deal with any issues without the threat of reality collapsing around us. But I _do_ insist on returning them—we have enough here without your bones to add.”

Ragnar grins, and then makes a little mock-bow. “So where is this place?”

_“Stiles,”_ barks through Stiles’ phone again.

“We’re betting on the convention center, Dad,” Stiles says. “Meet you there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genetic degradation in a cave setting is a reference to Lovecraft's _The Beast in the Cave_.
> 
> This is the universe where the role-shifting means Scott learned to werewolf with Allison's help, not Stiles' help, and occasionally also picks up a clue from his mother. I prefer my Scott as well-intentioned and idealistic, but still recognizing he's surrounded by people who he dearly loves who are much more morally flexible.
> 
> Yes, Marvel exists in this universe, and yes, Stiles is a fan partly because he likes to critique how _real_ magic or eldritch dimensions are totally weirder than what Marvel comes up with.


	12. Chapter 12

It’s after-hours and Melissa’s confirmed that the convention center isn’t hosting anything, and a fungi LMD is…is impressive in a way Stiles is going to carefully interrogate later, in a way that doesn’t put him through even more post-event psych screening than he’s already going to have to go through, but it’s not exactly a kanima in terms of physical strength and durability. But even so, none of them want this to last any longer than it needs to, so they are _totally_ bringing out all the big guns.

“Even the sheriff?” Stiles has to ask, when they drive up and the first thing he sees are several police cars waiting in the parking lot. 

“Yeah, we thought about not, but Dad says better to have them started early on the alibi,” Allison says, coming up next to him. She’s ditched the crossbow for one of those taser lightsabers and is checking the battery on it. “Also this way we know they’re all outside and don’t have to worry about any of them walking in on it.”

“Probably their preferred position anyway,” Stiles says.

Allison doesn’t really hide her smile as she retracts the saber and hooks it to her belt. She half-turns, then stops as Scott jogs up, holding out a bag. He gives it to her, wishes her good luck, and then pauses, looking a little startled but in a good way when she grabs the front of his shirt and lays a wet one on him.

“I’m gonna,” Scott starts when they pop apart. He pauses and catches up on his breath. “Gonna show the Lothbroks the service entrance and try to talk them out of crashing through the skylights. I don’t think that really works if we’re going with the wild-animal invasion story, that’s not really standard bear behavior. If that’s what we’re really going with this time.”

“Bears mean we get a chance to slip in a PSA about letting the wilderness be wild and calling experts instead of checking out weird animal behavior on your own,” Allison explains. She hikes the bag strap over her shoulder and smiles Scott off as he heads towards the cluster by the center. “So this keeps people out of the preserve till we can make sure he didn’t plant any back-up mushroom people. Also, we can’t use the gas leak twice in a month.”

“Right, got it, makes sense,” Stiles says. He should get over there too—Peter’s smile is starting to get on the homicidal side of entertained, somebody is riling him—but lingers a second. “So…uh…statistically, arguing while in the middle of a fight actually reduces your accuracy, so I have to ask…”

Allison makes enough of a face that at first Stiles assumes she’s just going to one-liner her way out of the conversation. But he really needs to give her more credit at this point; she’s more than shown she doesn’t back down from tough spots, and here, she just stalls for a couple seconds by fiddling with the bag. “Scott and I worked it out on the way over. It’s fine, I just…I’m still getting used to not being the expert, I guess. I mean, I know my family got it wrong a lot of the time, but they still knew a lot, and Scott…he’s always been the one who has to catch up. And he really doesn’t mind that—I wish I knew how he did that.”

“I don’t think he expects you to know everything he doesn’t,” Stiles points out.

“Yeah, I know, he doesn’t, but that’s what makes him so—” Allison presses her lips together “—I don’t resent him. Really. I just…want to know how he _does_ it. He just takes everything in stride.”

“Well, not everything, he always cares a ton about getting it right with you,” Stiles says. Then frowns as someone calls his name—Athelstan waves tentatively. Stiles waves back; Athelstan glances at his pair of werewolves, who are trying to not look like they’re intently monitoring the whole thing, and then starts to make his way over. “Hey, look, if Miskatonic’s getting to you—grad students should be exempt from a lot of the paranoia stuff, the idea is they’re already self-filtered for durability—”

Allison shakes her head. “No, it’s not class, I just…I just had a moment. It’s just…kind of different, being…being social with people in this world and it’s not…it’s just…social. But I’m fine, and I want to help you get this guy so you and Athelstan can actually get to your studies. You two must be so annoyed at this point.”

“Oh, no, of course not, I only just arrived,” Athelstan says as he comes up, blinking in a way that signals he obviously didn’t hear the first part of what she said.

“Well, anyway, I don’t think anybody needs to worry about a guy with walking mushroom people trying to steal pieces of the Nemeton,” Allison says. She’s got her cheerful face on again, but it does feel less like a mask over a seething generations-old inequity and more like a…a real attempt to move on to what’s important. “So let’s me and Scott and the rest of us deal with that, and you can get on with actual science!”

And with that, she heads over to what is clearly becoming the temporary field-command post, by virtue of Stiles’ dad standing in the middle of it with a pained look and a yellow-haloed tablet in hand. 

“He is in there, isn’t he?” Athelstan asks.

“Yeah, Dad’s team already hacked the security feed and confirmed entry. They’re not sure _where_ , but bets are on the atrium with its handy reflection pool right under the prior Cthulhu entry point,” Stiles says, checking his phone. “I think they’re just waiting so they can evac and process all the night security people, because, well, Leng.”

Athelstan sighs. “Yes, probably sensible, even though I’m quite positive that he never got even close to the inoculation chambers…do you think they need werewolves?”

“Um,” Stiles says, blinking. “Uh.”

“Never mind, even if I asked, this probably still goes back to demonstrating their prowess,” Athelstan mutters.

“I…I dunno, I think if you did ask, they would back off?” Stiles says. 

A tiny part of him thinks that, speaking of priorities, now is not really the time to be conducting sociological analysis on werewolves. As annoying as earlier was, that was body disposal and while that’s urgent, it wasn’t like a little personal sniping was really going to result in a new incursion by Great Old Ones. This kind of thing, on the other hand, is literally the first rule Stiles ever learned about Miskatonic: it doesn’t matter how interesting something could be, you’re not going to figure it out without an intact brain, body, and sense of self. 

And yet he’s not hurrying over to his dad like the unofficial Security consultant he is. Back before Beacon Hills, he would have, Stiles suddenly realizes. For that matter, the last time he had to race over to the convention center, he basically was doing that, running around screaming for people to pay attention to him…and kind of not realizing that they actually were.

Like Athelstan is right now, answering his rhetorical question with a slow, clearly thought-through response. “They would _regroup_ , I think would be a better word for it. Which isn’t the same, much as I’d like to pretend it is,” the man says. He rubs at the side of his face, looking tired. “That might be a little unfair to them. It’s been less than a month, it’s not like I can claim much familiarity—”

“You’ve only been with them a month?” Stiles says, blinking.

“Closer to a few weeks, and most of that time we’ve spent trying to explain various unfortunate corpses to other people,” Athelstan mutters. “I suppose that’s probably contributed to their insecurity. They are dealing with a lot of change—which they’ve said they welcome, but I still can’t help noticing the—the need to make an impression.”

Stiles nods in sympathy. “Yeah. Not that this is exclusive to werewolves, if you’ve ever been in the room for an interdepartmental taskforce—”

Athelstan grimaces.

“—but it’s tied to their identity in a way that I can get, even if it drives me crazy,” Stiles says. “I mean, proving to your packmates that you can protect them, at least that actually is intended to be useful, compared to proving you’ve delved deeper into the _Unaussprechlichen Kulten_ when that’s totally irrelevant to a problem with Kadathian—”

“Oh, really?” Athelstan interrupts, looking startled. “You think it’s about that? I thought it was about proving your strength to your opponents.”

“Well, okay, there’s some of that mixed in too, but I’m pretty sure it’s more about displaced denning instincts since they keep sticking close to you,” Stiles says. “If it was just showing off to Peter and Derek and Scott, they’d just come over and do all the showing-off.”

Athelstan still has a blank look on his face. Then his brows scrunch together and he pulls his phone out. “Denning,” he mumbles, typing rapidly.

He’s taking notes, Stiles realizes. “Oh… _oh_! Oh, you’re not there yet, no problem, I have this bibliography—” 

“ _Can I have that_ ,” Athelstan says, with surprising intensity. Then he flushes and shakes himself, clearing his throat. “That is—sorry, I’d really love a copy if you could—”

Stiles is already emailing it over.

The little ping of his phone makes Athelstan jump—and so do large stretches of the parking lot. Then he bites his lip, concentrating, as Stiles hastily scrawls some calming runes on the concrete to flatten it back out. “Sorry,” he mutters again, shaking his head. “I just…I feel like I may have gotten into something without having any idea—well, I _know_ I did. I just…can I ask you something?”

“Uh,” Stiles replies, because somehow he has a feeling this is going into relationship territory and look, his sarcasm tends to be out there all the time but at the end of the day, he likes to think he’s not a complete misanthrope (at least, not above the fifty-three point five cutoff Miskatonic uses). So his encyclopedic knowledge of certain psychological issues deemed a clear and present danger to society does not in any way, shape, or form actually qualify him as a counselor, and he knows that. But also…okay, he’s not an asshole. “Well, if you want. I’m not sure I’m going to know the answer, but—”

“How painful do you think it is for them to wait for someone to catch up?” Athelstan asks.

“Catch…up?” Stiles asks back.

Athelstan gestures with his phone-free hand. “Well, look, I really didn’t personally know any werewolves before them, and they’ve been very tolerant so far, but as I said, it’s only been a few weeks, and I can’t—this is all very novel to them. All of it, Cthulhic entities and the University system and compulsory sex magic, it’s not _just_ me, and they only _just_ decided to change things up for themselves and I’m worried they might just be latching onto the first exotic—”

“Um, so, caveat I’m definitely not a Psych major, or certified for any sort of psychoanalysis outside of field security assessments,” Stiles says, glancing over at the command center. None of the werewolves have gone inside yet; Derek and Peter are busy talking to Stiles’ dad, and Ragnar and Lagertha seem to be splitting their attention between that and Athelstan. They’re not staring so hard that Stiles thinks they really are eavesdropping, but Athelstan’s gesturing is starting to get animated. “But—this is totally just me, but I usually have better results if I go up and, you know, mention to their face that I feel like that. I know it makes you feel kind of whiny, but the thing is, sometimes they’re so busy with the body language and scents that I think they get hung up on all the subtext detection when really, it’s not about I smell upset about the pizza so let’s never order that again when the pizza’s actually _great_ , I’m just—you know, that is _not_ what is _upsetting_ me—”

Athelstan is taking notes again. Which at least means he stops gesturing, but Stiles knows that particular elbows-in hunch and he sighs and waits till the man’s caught up on typing (his inner Dad is _so_ smug right now).

“—look, the other thing?” Stiles says. He waits till Athelstan looks up before he goes on. “The other thing, I think, is actually they get kind of weird about people adjusting to them. I don’t think they always know how to deal with it. I mean Derek and Peter, but also I see this with Derek’s sisters and even sometimes with Scott, though he’s by far the least like that, probably thanks to his mom—”

“Sorry, I don’t follow—they don’t know how to deal with people trying to learn their ways?” Athelstan says. “But aren’t we terribly annoying before we do?”

“Well, but we aren’t actively trying to kill them, so we’re around for longer than other people ever are,” Stiles points out. He watches Athelstan absorb that, consider it, have a few things connect but not all, and then puzzle over the remaining pieces. “Which I also think weirds them out. And often really turns them on, if we’re gonna be real here, but…also, they get weird about it. Not really in a bad way, to be clear, just…they sort of get all, you are _the one_ and then don’t want to let you know they feel like that in case you leave, because that is apparently the only possible reaction you could have to finding out, and then they do stupid stuff to keep you from finding out.”

“But if they are used to people normally trying to learn their ways to kill them, that does make some sense,” Athelstan says in a considering tone. He hesitates, then goes on. “So you think they’re attracted to the act of trying to understand them.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, without thinking much about it. Then he does, in light of what Athelstan had dropped about being ‘exotic,’ and the tone Athelstan had used when doing that. “Yeah…I don’t think it’s really so much the novelty, although admittedly when we first met, Peter made it sound like—but werewolves are loyal. This is their thing, this is what they build their packs on. I mean, otherwise, when they’re stressed, you’d think they’d run off, not dig in and den.”

Athelstan starts to open his mouth as if to ask a question, but then he stops himself. He glances down at his phone and his thumb starts to move over the screen, and then he stops that too, instead putting the phone away. He looks at the convention center.

“I honestly do want to study the Nemeton,” he says. “I think the idea of a supernatural entity having a near-death encounter with a Great Old One and taking away the lesson that it needs to be _more_ of this world, not less, to the point that it’s studying procreation is fascinating.”

“Oh, one hundred and ten percent,” Stiles says. “The baby clones are cute, I’m not going to lie, but you can definitely tell they’re operating with less than one hundred percent consciousness. There’s not much after they learn to beg for food and hide from joggers.”

“Well, then, there is absolutely _no_ reason why that plagiarizing thief should get to publish first, is there?” Athelstan says.

Stiles cocks his head. “So…is that a rhetorical question? Or are you leading into something?”

“I might be completely off-base with this but something did occur to me,” Athelstan says. “This man should be covered with mushroom spores at this point, and for better or worse, I _am_ a conduit for fertility magic now.”

“Oh…okay, I think I see where you’re going,” Stiles says. “But if we’re gonna pull from that page of the Tsathoggua studies—”

“That would be where the werewolves come in,” Athelstan says. “If you think they’ll—”

Stiles starts to grin. “Oh, I think they’ll be okay with it. Let’s ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This series is also, not-so-secretly, about Stiles the super-knowledgeable outsider specialist, realizing that he has a crew. They're weird, and kind of infuriating, and have all of this historical drama baggage he has to keep stepping around, but he has a crew. Because besides Lydia, he didn't really meet many people at Miskatonic he got close to.


	13. Chapter 13

As it turns out, catching a rogue plant collector is rather straightforward when you have five werewolves, an entire Miskatonic Security team, and three Cthulhic Studies graduate students. Most of the work, Athelstan quickly learns, goes into determining where to position the local law enforcement so that they think they can supervise what’s going on but aren’t actually able to interfere, intentionally or not.

“This is more complicated but does not cost as much as bribes,” Lagertha observes.

“Eh, less work than changing memories,” Ragnar counters. “And no worry about taking off the head without meaning to.”

That earns him a suspicious look from the nearest of the Miskatonic team members, but instead of grinning back at them, Ragnar ducks and shrugs a little sheepishly, and then withdraws to let them bag up the remains of the fungi body at his feet. Then moves to where Lagertha and Athelstan are sitting on the curb.

“Right, it’s not coming up a high enough concentration that you need to go through a full decontamination protocol,” Athelstan says, checking his phone. “Just a regular shower, and I suppose we might have to wait a few days to get your axes back.”

“They can keep them,” Ragnar says with another shrug. Then blinks when Athelstan looks up at him. “We brought others, and that was not my favorite.”

“Well, but still…I don’t think they need to,” Athelstan says.

“It is just if it is easier for you,” Lagertha adds, reaching out to put her hand on his knee.

Athelstan…doesn’t pull away, but he must do something because Lagertha, still looking at him, never quite puts her hand down. Her lips tighten slightly and then she pulls her arm back and resettles herself on the curb, with far more graceful dignity than he could ever manage. But she still clearly feels rebuked.

He hadn’t really intended that, but at the same time he…he looks away, uncomfortable with the situation and with himself, and catches Ragnar watching them with a wary, strangely hesitant expression. When Ragnar realizes he’s under review, the man twitches his shoulders back and then abruptly turns around to look at the impromptu command center Miskatonic’s set up in the parking lot.

“They are starting a…post-mortem,” Ragnar says, hooking his chin where Stiles is visibly exclaiming over the fungal debris spread over a tarp on the ground. He cocks his head and listens for a few seconds. “Something interesting about the…the cellular migration patterns?”

“Cellulose mutation patterns,” Athelstan says, half-absently pulling the right paper reference out of his memory. Stiles had shouted something about that over the radio earlier, when he and the werewolves had been knocking down mushroom people before they could sprout enough to complete the summoning circle. “Well, that should make an excellent monograph, or perhaps two, considering the Nemeton…”

He's surprisingly tired for someone who never actually went inside the convention center and instead helped out with the negating bubble from outside (they didn’t want to chance any ripple from his personal magic indoors, considering all the other cross-influences that already needed to be accounted for). It hadn’t been terribly strenuous in physical terms, but he only now realizes how tensed-up he must have been through it all from how his muscles are, one by one, slowly releasing into bone-deep aching. He’d been too distracted: casting spells, listening to the radio, jumping nervously whenever one of the local police officers walked their way. 

And he’s tired. He spends a second mustering up the effort and then he hauls himself off the curb, looking around for their rental car. “Do you think they’ll mind much if we don’t go back for the body before tomorrow?”

“The body?” Ragnar says.

For a moment, Athelstan genuinely wonders if perhaps that part of the evening had been just his imagination. Then he shakes himself; he’s not _that_ mentally unwound. “Einar?”

“Oh,” Lagertha says. When he’d first started to rise, she had closed off her expression into a smooth blankness, but now it comes back alive with surprise. “Oh. Yes, we—”

“I can just ask Stiles if you don’t want to talk to either of the Hales,” Athelstan says.

Ragnar and Lagertha both give off the distinct impression that they’ve just kept themselves from reacting. “If that is what you wish,” Lagertha finally says, getting slowly to her feet.

“He is talking about the things you like,” Ragnar says, with a shrug so elaborately nonchalant that it utterly backfires. “He would not mind, I think.”

Athelstan stops, pushing his mind out of its fatigue fog, and studies the pair of them. They’d been so intensely insistent on keeping him out of their posturing with the local pack, even though it’d been occurring literally centimeters from him for most of the night, and then had just…about-faced and seemingly pulled together to work seamlessly with the other werewolves. Except not really, he thinks. The seams are still there, and they’re still trying to keep those out of his sight, as if just him seeing them would make them pull apart.

It's a bit funny to think that he’s not the terrified one, for once. “No, I hope not, because I’d like to go back to the cabin if we can,” he says.

Ragnar blinks hard. “You…don’t want to listen to the—”

“I think he’ll still want to talk about it tomorrow too, if he’s anything like I am about these kinds of discoveries,” Athelstan says, unable to help it coming out a bit dry. Then he has to stifle a yawn. “But no, honestly, I’d really like to just go back. Take this all up after I’ve caught up to the time zone.”

For a moment, they both stare at him. Ragnar licks at his lip, about to speak, and then Lagertha abruptly reaches out and hits his arm. Then he stares at her instead; she seems a little surprised at herself, to be honest. They’re usually far less obvious when they’re nonverbally communing with each other.

“All right,” Ragnar finally says. He still very much sounds and looks as if this is uneven terrain for him, and what’s more, that he’s very uncertain as to his capability to navigate it. “We can go back.”

“Excellent, thank you,” Athelstan says.

They stand there for a few more seconds. Then, grimacing at himself, Athelstan shoves off his default English gentleman (as Gisla usually refers to it) and makes himself go over to the command center, because they can’t just walk off. For one, he’s not sure where the Miskatonic team’s put his rental SUV.

He doesn’t remember to look back until he’s already taken a few steps, but thankfully, Ragnar and Lagertha are already following him. They _are_ eerily subdued, and continue to be that way as he makes contact with John Stilinski, briefly explains what he’d like, and asks for transportation.

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine, somebody’ll come by to tidy up your witness statements and get follow-up testing but nobody’s going to be open for that till noon or later anyway,” John says, clearly more interested in his team. And possibly also in the animated discussion that Melissa and Scott are having with one of the deputies. “I think we have to keep your rental because Forensics wants to check something, but we can get you a loaner, just give me a sec.”

“Forensics?” Athelstan says, anticipating the way Ragnar and Lagertha tense up. “I thought the kanima didn’t meet eldritch standards.”

“Yeah, no, it doesn’t, it’s not that. It’s because Stiles said he was doing some set-up work in the back and my kid thinks _anything_ he does in a Miskatonic vehicle is covered by our expense account,” John says. He drags his eyes away from the law enforcement discussion long enough to look irritably resigned. “Look, the kanima…just update your visa forms and we’ll call it a day. I’ve got enough here without the Office of Interspecies Relations sticking their nose in for a mediation, all right?”

“Update?” Ragnar asks.

John pauses and then visibly recalibrates himself. “Yeah, whoever the hell it was, they’re not going to be listed on active potential conflicts if they’re dead now. Listen, give me a couple and somebody will bring a car around, but I need to go deal with this—sorry, excuse me.”

And then the man about-faces and walks off. It’s a bit curt, but he does pause to speak to one of his team members, who glances over at Athelstan as John continues towards the local deputy. They finish up boxing some mushroom fragments and then come over.

“I’d just like a trip back to my rental cabin,” Athelstan says immediately. “Honestly, I don’t need an entire car, just—”

“Here,” the man says, digging into his pocket. He pulls out a keyfob and his phone, and tosses the keyfob at Athelstan. Then frowns down at his phone. “It’s the silver one second from the end, okay, just keyed you in, and I’m emailing you the spellwork manual…now. There you go. Just do me a favor, top up the tank? I was gonna do that when I got the call.”

Athelstan juggles the keyfob a few times before getting firm fingers around it, and by then the man’s already walking away from them, back towards the crates he’d been working in before. This is all very…informal, Athelstan thinks, and for a moment he almost wants to object.

But then his common sense finally catches up with him. He takes the keys, quickly checks that he’s gotten the email, and then heads off towards the car, two very quiet werewolves in tow.

It is a thirty-five minute drive back to the cabin, even at an hour where there is no traffic and where, if Athelstan chose to disregard stop signs and red lights, he’d suffer no consequences whatsoever, and it is excruciatingly quiet. He makes it to the center of town before he can’t stand it anymore and opens his mouth.

“A _kanima_ is someone who has been bitten by a werewolf, but they are—there is some personal…problem that means they do not learn the right way to shift,” Lagertha says from the front passenger seat. She and Ragnar usually sit together, either there or in the back, but they’d silently separated upon getting into the car. “When Ragnar and I were apart, I…took over a different pack. Einar was part of it. He wished to be a werewolf, but the alpha before me and then I did not think he would be—would be right. And this is true, since when he found someone to turn him, he became a kanima instead. We—we heard this, but we did not know where he was, so when we helped you fill out the form, that is why we only gave you his name.”

Ragnar sighs. “Also we do not like to talk about when we were apart. This is not your fault, it is just…something for us.”

“I…I don’t really want to know,” Athelstan mutters. Then sighs, and stops a few feet over the intersection line because he’s reaching up to rub at his face instead of paying attention. He winces at the short skidding trip the car takes, and then remembers there’s absolutely no one and nothing to notice. Except for the people in the SUV with him. “I mean, I _do_ want to—I want to learn about werewolves, and what’s important and not important to you. And what’s or who’s trying to kill you, because obviously, at this point, we have to acknowledge that a rather large number still do—”

“It’s not your problem,” Ragnar starts.

But he’s half-hearted about it, even before Athelstan blows out a breath in frustration and makes him fall silent. “Well, it obviously is if they’re going to pop up when I’m around,” he snaps. The light changes and he drives forward. “And even if they’re not—what kind of person am I if I don’t care that the people I am _trying_ to have a relationship with are constantly under attack? I can’t just very well close my eyes and pretend it’s not the case, can I?”

In the rearview mirror, Ragnar is leaning forward so that the light from the streetlamps coming through the windshield catches in his eyes. For a moment they flash red, but then he blinks hard and they revert to pale, almost washed-white blue. “You are a good person,” he says, with a strange emphasis on ‘person.’ “So no.”

“I know,” Athelstan starts, and then stops so that he can fully think through his thought. “I know that you’re worried about what they’re going to think about me, but I’m not—listen, if they throw me out because you were in danger and I went over their body-disposal limit or anything like that, I’d still rather you were alive.”

And then it’s quiet again. Once or twice one of them, he’s never sure which (they’re always still again by the time he glances over), takes a sharp breath, but it never actually turns into words. 

They reach the outskirts of town and then turn onto the road into the preserve. The window creaks slightly and Athelstan starts, then catches Lagertha stretched up to sniff at the air flowing through the crack she’s opened. She immediately drops back, looking a little guilty, and this…this is exactly what he didn’t want to have happen.

“I like you both,” he says, trying again. A small part of him does wonder when this all started to matter so much to him, but that’s something he can sort out a different time. The point is, it _does_ matter, and if he does end up being expelled again, he’d like to have company. “I like you, I think, because it really doesn’t seem to bother you what I study, or the things I can do…it doesn’t seem to frighten you at all. And I know you’ve said that’s because you can tell I’m not meaning to do you harm, but that’s still—I can still—”

“If you did us harm without trying, it would not be your fault but ours,” Lagertha says. It’s an abrupt interruption but her actual words are delivered in a slow, careful tone. “You have told us about you, so we cannot say we do not know.”

“Yes, I know, and that’s…it sounds very simple, I know.” He’s repeating himself. He winces, and then almost misses the turn-off. The car bounces roughly as one wheel leaves the road, enough so that Ragnar props an arm against the ceiling. Athelstan winces again and then flips on the high-beams so that the cabin comes into view. “I actually was in school to be a priest for a while.”

Ragnar lowers his arm. His head bobs forward, curiosity lighting up his face, but he’s still suppressing himself and so doesn’t actually ask.

“I loved reading, but that doesn’t fit in very well with most boys so—going to a seminary seemed like a good idea at the time. You’re not supposed to bother much with the secular world,” Athelstan says, answering them anyway. “And the trust my parents left me could buy that, if it couldn’t buy friends…but I got rather fascinated with old, obscure medieval herbals, and talked to some rather dodgy people chasing those down, and ended up drifting into Cthulhic Studies. And you know, it’s a bit surprising at first. You think that it’d be wonderful, working with other people who are studying the same rare thing you’re studying.”

“They do not seem to like sharing,” Ragnar says. He moves back in his seat as Athelstan parks, and then somehow appears right outside the car, in time to open the door for Athelstan. His body angles and re-angles itself, not quite slotting in beside Athelstan. “This one with the mushroom men. Some of them.”

“Stiles does not seem to have this problem,” Lagertha says, coming around the front end of the car.

Ragnar makes a face at her, even though she’d sounded reluctant in the first place to mention it. Which makes Athelstan sigh. “He is rather refreshing, and I would like to be able to talk to him without—without so much else going on, but I think that’s why I’m trying to understand you two,” he tells them. “What I’m trying to say here is, no, I don’t have a lot of people who just…who just are nice to me, and it got _worse_ after Averoigne, even if I became more powerful, and I don’t—I don’t see why you need to be scared of him. I’m not interested in him that way. Or do I—I don’t give off a smell or anything like that—”

“No,” Ragnar says immediately, although a tiny part of Athelstan wonders if that’s only because he’d started to raise his voice. But then Ragnar steps in beside him, close enough to swing an arm over Athelstan’s shoulders and rubbing and twisting one hand against his hip as if he’d like to. “No. It is not that, it is…these are our problems, these people who come and want to kill us. And we…we do not want the ways that led to these problems, but we are not—we are not _running_ from them either.”

“I think it was a little simple to think that if we left Norway, they would leave us alone,” Lagertha says, looking out at the woods around them. She turns in a half-circle and Athelstan realizes that, as regretful as she looks and sounds, she’s also looking for enemies. “We will need to do more about that. This is not something we mind, this is the price of starting again, but this is—”

“You keep saying it’s yours, but if I’m really to learn what—who you are, isn’t that also about what’s happened to you? And what’s still happening to you?” Athelstan says. They reach the door and he triggers the unlocking spells, then stands back as the security wards wash over them. “I’m not saying that I need to horn in and do anything that tramples all over your own freedom to choose, or your private affairs, but I do…I _am_ interested in you. And I thought you were interested in me.”

“Yes,” Ragnar says forcefully. 

He and Athelstan, who’d turned back to see if they were following, stare at each other. Ragnar’s shoulders and neck muscles shiver slightly, showing that the man wants to move, but he just holds himself that way, as if suspended by tripwires, until Athelstan finally steps backwards into the house. Then Lagertha comes into view. She’s less obvious about the tension, but she still gives off the strong impression of a fist clenched to hold in, not to lash out.

“I think,” she starts. Then stops. She glances at Ragnar, who ticks one brow, and then she steps over the threshold. “I think that we are afraid of you.”

“Really?” Athelstan says, startled. Which is swiftly followed by a familiar sinking in the pit of his stomach.

“We are not afraid of what you can do, Athelstan,” Lagertha adds, quietly but with enough strength behind it that even his spiraling self-esteem has to drag itself to attention. “What I said is true. We know what that is, and this is not the problem. I think you think it is.”

“I…” Athelstan closes his mouth. Then sighs and drops his bag in the corner, and flops into the end of the couch nearest to it. “Well, yes, but honestly that’s not completely about you.”

“We know.” Lagertha stops to take her shoes off and then flips on the light in the kitchen. She moves fully into the space and starts to poke around the coffeemaker. “And this is not something we like, but it will take time for you to understand that most people you have met are fools.”

Athelstan opens his mouth, then thinks the better of it, which makes Ragnar grin as he half-crawls, half-snakes onto the other end of the couch. Ragnar’s shoes clunk against the floor as he swings both legs onto the cushions and pulls himself to nearly besides Athelstan. Then, oddly, he seems to lose his initiative and just rolls handfuls of the sofa cushion while gazing at Athelstan’s knee.

“You do not think they will expel you,” Ragnar finally says.

It’s at least half a question. “Not really, honestly,” Athelstan says, rubbing at his eye. He’s suddenly sleepy—not only tired, _sleepy_ , and it occurs to him that he hasn’t really slept since on the flight over, which was only a few hours of it. The rest of the time, he’d been talking to one of them. “I know Norway was—but that was also not a university-owned site, it was private land, and Miskatonic’s actually…they seem a bit more casual about these things. I think it’s all ri—well, I think for them this is just going to be more of a private matter.”

“I do not think that the pack here really will be a problem,” Ragnar says. He leans back, then pushes himself up again so that he’s finally looking Athelstan in the eye. “They are very…eager to make a point, but I do not think they want a fight. Or to have…what would you say…”

“Blackmail?” Athelstan suggests.

The smile Ragnar gives him is dry and a little twisted, and not yet back to the man’s usual unrestrained glee. “Yes.”

“I think, at the end of the day, they just want someone to explain what’s going on to them. Which I can understand, to be honest,” Athelstan says.

Ragnar shrugs noncommittally. He has more to say, but before he gets around to it, he glances to Lagertha and then back to Athelstan. “I think when we say we are afraid of you, we mean—you will help, we can see that. You are a good person, and you do like us, and you do like to learn about _us_.”

“So that’s what makes you afraid?” Athelstan says.

“No, it is that you are these things, which we want.” Ragnar’s mouth twists again, and it’s clearly not at Athelstan. His knuckles brush up against Athelstan’s leg, then move back—

Athelstan grabs the man’s wrist without thinking and Ragnar goes utterly motionless. If Athelstan wasn’t looking directly at him, he might not even know the man was there.

Then, slowly, Ragnar lifts his arm. He does it slowly so that Athelstan won’t let go of it, Athelstan realizes. Athelstan loosens his grip because it is rather tight, but he makes it clear he’s not releasing the other man, and then Ragnar reaches out and almost touches the side of Athelstan’s jaw. There’s a strange, sad kind of wonder in the man’s face.

“You are these things, and we are…very bad at keeping things we want,” Ragnar finally says. “We were bad. Before, when we were fighting—fighting for things that did not even matter as much, except that we wanted them.”

“Not people,” Lagertha says, appearing beside the couch. She sets a mug of steaming coffee at Athelstan’s elbow, and then moves back as if she’s going to seat herself on the coffeetable.

Athelstan raises his free hand and she pauses. She gets the same expression as Ragnar, but when he moves his legs as if to rise, she comes forward. She puts her hand on the couch-arm and then climbs onto his lap, still with the hand to the side as if she means to get off at the slightest signal from him.

“There were people who fought for us too, for the things we wanted.” Lagertha lifts her hand and puts her fingers over Ragnar’s, so that their fingertips finally press into Athelstan’s jaw. “We did not force them. They had their reasons too. But…they were gone, even before we were put in the jars, and when we came out and they were still not there…this is not something we wish to do again.”

“Right, well, I’m trying very hard not to end up dead myself,” Athelstan says, in a poor attempt at humor. He glances away, then realizes that removes their fingers from his face; he turns back and panics a little, thinking he can see them starting to back away.

Ragnar is still again, so still that Athelstan actually disbelieves the pulse under his fingers. Then, with a sigh that’s like settling into a soft bed at the end of a long day, the other man folds himself against Athelstan’s shoulder. Athelstan sucks his breath, then—follows through on it, on the hand he’s latched around Ragnar’s throat, and lifts his chin so Ragnar can tuck his head under it. Then he lifts his hand to Lagertha.

She glances at it, biting her lip, and then raises her own hand. For a moment they are palm-to-palm, with her fingertips bending as if to lace between his fingers—then she flexes them back, and instead twists her wrist to curl her fingers around the back of his hand, drawing it against the side of her neck as she settles more securely on his thighs.

“I just think we can probably work on a way where I’m not worried about you and you’re not doing things in fear that I’m going to lose my job,” Athelstan says. “It’s actually rather difficult to do that. Lose my job, I mean.”

“Yes, your mentor said the others are not sane,” Ragnar mutters, breath sluicing warmly down under Athelstan’s shirt-collar.

In spite of himself, Athelstan chuckles. Lagertha lifts her head and looks at him and he feels his smile fading into uncertainty. She leans in, presses her lips softly against his jaw. “We do not want it to be harder than it should be.”

“Well, neither do I, but again—”

“We can work on it,” Lagertha says, pulling back and looking at him. “We are working on it.”

“It is just…very different,” Ragnar says, continuing to mutter. He moves his head a little, as if rubbing his cheek against Athelstan’s shoulder. Lagertha’s shirt has pulled out of her pants and he stretches his fingers up to absently toy with the hem. “New. It is new. We did not do this before, talk about these things, and—”

“Are you afraid you’re not going to be good at it?” Athelstan asks.

Ragnar stops flipping at Lagertha’s shirt. He’s going to let her answer, Athelstan thinks, watching how Lagertha’s expression crumples a little into rueful acknowledgement, and then Ragnar lifts his head.

“There is a reason why we have a lot of axes,” he says. His lips pull back as if he’s smiling, but it’s not really a smile, what’s on his face. “A lot of axes, and not a lot of—of people.”

“Well, you have—you have your children, and your lawyer. And—and me,” Athelstan says. “And admittedly I’m not trained in fighting or anything like that, but I can, well, export people to other dimensions.”

Ragnar shifts a little, and the shape of his mouth becomes an actual smile. “This is true.”

“And I don’t mind, actually. I just want to—to be doing it on purpose, for a reason I think is appropriate,” Athelstan goes on. “Which honestly is part of why I’d like it if we talked about this, so I could know when it might be worth the paperwork to send someone to Yog-Sothoth or not, and—and so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“I understand. But.” Lagertha tilts her head. “I do not think we can promise not to worry. That is the _new_ part we are trying to learn, to…to remember to think about needs that are not just our needs.”

“Well…all right, that’s fair,” Athelstan says after a moment’s thought. Then he takes another moment, surprised at how the two of them suddenly seem relieved. “But…you can let me try and help with things too. Can’t you?”

Lagertha and Ragnar glance at each other, then back at him. They’re not reluctant because they don’t think he can offer any meaningful help; he’s quite familiar with that sort of hesitation. It’s almost as if his suggestion is making them feel ashamed of themselves. Which probably is some sort of breach of werewolf etiquette that he’s not yet aware of.

“It’s just that, I’d like to. If it’s not offensive or anything, I just—you’re obviously trying very hard not to offend me and I’m willing to do the same and—”

There’s just the faintest brush of a thumb against his cheek before Lagertha’s stopping up his mouth with her own. Athelstan stutters, then freezes, suddenly concerned he might accidentally bite her tongue, and she pulls back. She looks uncertain and—he had wondered if perhaps she was just trying to distracted him, but with that expression he doesn’t think so. He thinks—he thinks instead that the language barrier may not be what he thinks it is. If they’re so reliant on body language or other nonverbal cues, to the point that they have difficulty ignoring them…

He still has his hand against her neck. He untangles it from her fingers, then curls it directly against her skin. Her pupils widen sharply; the rest of her face doesn’t stir. And next to them Ragnar is so motionless that only the weight of him against Athelstan’s shoulder still convinces that he’s present. If Athelstan turned his head…if he did, he’d start. He knows that about himself by now, he’s the nervous type.

He didn’t think that either of them were, with the slyly helpless shrugs and the unimpressed gazes, but perhaps he shouldn’t be so caught up in initial appearances either. 

Athelstan runs his fingers along Lagertha’s throat. Her eyelids close a little and he sucks his breath, then flushes, silently reprimanding himself for being too wound up. She immediately opens her eyes and looks at him, but there’s enough lingering…she tilts herself into his touch, lifting her chin to elongate her neck when he strokes it again. This time, as his fingertips rise past her mouth, her lips just catch at them.

He pauses, then draws his hand towards himself. She seems to sense what he intends and allows herself to be drawn forward as well, till their faces are only a few centimeters away. Then he softly twists his hand free, and before she can withdraw again, he shifts to the side and gets his arm around to touch the damp fingertips to Ragnar’s jaw.

Ragnar is very quiet and very still. When he’s this focused on Athelstan, the blue of his eyes seems to contain a hundred different shades of the color, flecks of each predominating or fading as time goes on. Athelstan’s put his fingers on Ragnar’s beard and it doesn’t feel quite…he moves them back, to the point of the jaw and then just behind the ear, where the skin is soft and hairless. The moisture on them is almost gone but there’s just enough left to let his fingertips slide easily along the curl of Ragnar’s ear. When he puts his thumb under the man’s jaw, Ragnar closes his eyes and noses in, more rubbing their lower lips together than kissing.

“I don’t think,” Athelstan mumbles, mostly around the other man’s mouth, because he’s still rather graceless like that.

Unoffended, Ragnar nuzzles his way along Athelstan’s chin to free things up for him. “Yes?”

“I don’t—” Athelstan swallows hard at the slight rasping tickle of Ragnar’s beard “—I don’t think I really can, ah, can have sex again tonight. I’m exhausted.”

And he is. He honestly is, right down to his bones, with the kind of fatigue that he knows from long experience will even keep him from falling asleep, because his body and mind can’t muster the energy to unstring themselves out of their nervous state. It’s the fatigue that crops up when he’s most likely to miss a warning sign and go on past it out of sheer inertial motion.

For a moment he thinks that the touch of Ragnar’s teeth against his jaw might be one. But then the other man sighs, and lifts his head. “Yes.”

“Oh, but—” Athelstan says, tightening his fingers against Ragnar’s nape. Then he has to laugh, tiredly, at the sudden flare of anticipation in Ragnar’s eyes. “No, I am, but—but I’d like to see you two. If—if—”

Ragnar’s pupils round in the amused ‘oh’ that he is pointedly not voicing. He grins, then looks at Lagertha, who holds herself aloof for a moment longer, before sliding across Athelstan’s lap with a tolerant smile. She takes Ragnar’s head in both hands and pulls him off of Athelstan, then pushes him backwards against the couch so that he’s sprawling on his back.

“With him still—” she starts.

“Well, for now, but I’ll take it off when you’re closer,” Athelstan says. Then, feeling brave or perhaps just punch-drunk enough to think he is, he scoots under one of Ragnar’s legs to just lay his hand over one of her calves. “Not before, if you can—don’t mind managing—”

Lagertha’s smile widens, almost nearing Ragnar’s habitual smirk, and Ragnar’s entire body visibly tightens at the sight of it. “Yes,” she says. She bends down over Ragnar—he’s bringing his hands up to pull her shirt up—and then pauses as he lets out a stifled noise of irritation. “Of course.”

“Oh,” Athelstan says, his mouth already dry. 

And then he thinks to thank her, but by then the two of them are pressing feverishly against each other. Clothes are sliding out from between them, somehow: Lagertha’s top slithers across Ragnar’s back before falling to the floor, Ragnar’s jeans end up in a squirming bundle against Athelstan’s knee before Athelstan gets his hand up on top of the couch and levers himself out of their way. It’s almost like a transformation in and of itself, how they render each other into two gloriously nude bodies.

Tired as he is, even Athelstan isn’t immune. When Lagertha’s fingers drag down Ragnar’s back, long golden bars caging in the black tattoos that twist restlessly under them, he finds his breath catching. The world shifts on him.

And then, being who he is, he grips at the sofa and looks sharply around, hoping that it isn’t actually the world, but only him. If he has to remember how to counterchant now…

He doesn’t. The corners do look a little wobbly, but judging from the soft flicker of grounding runes, that’s well within the ordinary tolerances of the cabin’s spellwork.

“Athelstan,” Ragnar says, so low and hoarse that for a moment Athelstan doesn’t recognize the word.

He turns back. Lagertha is straddling Ragnar now, one hand cupped under his balls, her other pressed tightly between her own thighs. She’s biting her lip hard enough for it to whiten, but when she sees him looking at her, she lets it loose—it takes an effort he can see—and breathes in roughly as if she’d like to also speak. But she doesn’t seem to quite have enough air for it.

Athelstan pulls at the collar of his shirt, then sucks his breath at how cold the little draft of air that sends down his torso feels. Then he pulls open the front of his pants and sort of knees out of them; he still isn’t going to join, he thinks, no matter if he can’t stop watching the way that Ragnar’s skin pales and then colors under the press of his fingers. But he—can get comfortable with this.

He works up next to Lagertha, with one hand on Ragnar’s leg for balance. He tries to be careful, but he jars against her and she lets out a low, ragged moan, slumping heavily against the couch. Then, with a jerk that startles him, she pulls her hand out from between her thighs and slaps it against Ragnar’s belly. She says something to herself in Norwegian, guttural but clearly determined, and Ragnar laughs roughly, sympathetically. Then twists sharply himself, his hands gouging deep into the sofa arm behind his head. 

“Athelstan,” he says again, eyes flicking over, a long, longing note entering his voice. His gaze seems to stroke at the hand Athelstan puts on Lagertha’s shoulder, then waist, and then he slips into Norwegian himself. 

He grimaces, shakes his head, opens his mouth, obviously trying to remember how to translate. They do try, Athelstan thinks, and then reaches down along the curve of Lagertha’s leg to where Ragnar’s sheathed cock is rolling.

When he pulls the buckles open and tugs the leather away, they both shudder. Then gasp deeply, their bodies vibrating against the wall of air between them. Athelstan notices drops of sweat on the part of Lagertha’s throat peeking out from her streams of hair, and without thinking he bends down and presses his mouth to it as his fingers drop to circle Ragnar’s urgently-growing erection.

Lagertha arches against him. For a moment they’re pressed so tightly together that _he’s_ rendered breathless. Her fingers snap around his wrist and she breathes in, making just enough space that he can follow. She’s still…waiting? Waiting.

Athelstan moves Ragnar’s cock. He has no idea if it’s in the right direction, his field of sight is completely filled with the rest of them, but it’s enough of a signal to her and she rolls up, then down, her hand leaving him so that she can dig her nails into Ragnar’s chest. Ragnar lets off a sharp, distinctly pleased ‘hah’ and pushes into her nails, rising up so that the drag of them leaves deep pink marks down his pectorals. 

They move a little away from Athelstan and he pulls his arm out from between them before it can get trapped against the couch. Wipes some of the sweat coming off his face, then flops where he is, letting himself go boneless with the sheer…yes, it’s pleasure. It is a pleasure, and he has to admit he’s unrepentant about it, watching them together.

Ragnar grunts as Lagertha, still trembling a little, goes slack against him. His face turns into her hair and he noses a little at it. Clearly scenting, Athelstan thinks; he can see Ragnar’s nostrils flaring. But then the other man pulls back and looks at him. “No?”

Athelstan starts. Then, thinking on it, allows himself a rueful smile. It isn’t meant as a jibe, he can tell, and when he pushes himself up again so Ragnar can see his groin, he even laughs at the obvious surprise on the man’s face. “I am _tired_. And not, as you can see, blessed with supernatural stamina.”

“Do not pay attention to him, his mouth runs in front of him,” comes a warm voice at his ear, and as he turns, Lagertha loops her arm about his waist. She nuzzles at his throat and shoulder. Pauses when he puts his palm against her hip, and then relaxes as he simply curls into her. “If you do not want to—”

“We can wait,” Ragnar says, with a toothy smile.

He’s considerably more hesitant when Athelstan, snorting in spite of himself, impulsively bends down towards him. His hand comes up to land on Athelstan’s shoulder, but it’s more to support—Athelstan had miscalculated the distance and grabbed for the sofa behind Ragnar’s head—than to pull Athelstan in. He does, in fact, wait for that, until Athelstan resettles and then kisses him.

“In the morning, possibly,” Athelstan says. He does have a little trouble getting Ragnar to _stop_ enough for speech, and even then, Ragnar keeps nibbling at his lower lip. “When—I might actually start _working_ on something—”

Ragnar and Lagertha both laugh, and then tuck him between them. It’s a rather insane life, he thinks, but…he does like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who don't watch _Vikings_ , Ragnar and Lagertha separated (for sort of dumb sticking-to-the-sagas reasons because Ragnar needed to marry another woman to have sons who were going to be key players later), and Lagertha went off and became a Viking lord in her own right. Einar was one of those shifty second-rate villains who crushed on her, but never got the better of her.
> 
> A fair number of Cthulhu Mythos tales have referenced the _Voynich Manuscript_ , so that's my backstory for how Athelstan got into this in the first place.


	14. Chapter 14

“Okay, I just want a copy of the report-out, and before you even, it’s totally within my Security clearance _and_ my scope of studies, Dad,” Stiles says, closing his laptop. “Don’t make me get it from the librarians.”

His father’s response is…weirdly non-responsive. The man doesn’t say anything, just stares at Stiles. A Security team member wanders up with a question about semi-corporeal organic filtration and his dad answers intelligently, so nothing’s been compromised in there, but he’s still just…staring at Stiles. 

And then, when Stiles tucks his laptop under one arm, his dad puts his hand out. “One second,” he says, before raising his phone between them. He pokes at the screen, frowning, and—

“Are you _scanning_ me?” Stiles sputters in disbelief. “Dad, I’m—I’m me, I can—I can totally pass all of the Carter Permutations, all of them, even the—”

“Yeah, yeah, I see that,” his dad says, lowering the phone. He sticks it in one pocket, looking a little tired, and Stiles _almost_ cuts him some slack (it has been a pretty dramatic twenty-four hours) when he reaches out and puts his hand against Stiles’ forehead.

Stiles blinks. Then again. Then, resisting the urge to start reeling off psychic-attack diagnostic chants, he asks, “Dad? Are you…taking my temperature? Using a completely discredited folk method?”

“Nah, I’m checking your third eye for occlusion,” his dad says, with a straight face.

Stiles just. He has no words.

“Kidding, son,” his dad says, taking his hand off and then ruffling Stiles’ hair. He barks an order at a passing, peripherally interested Security person, then sighs and looks over the busy scene. “I am kind of curious about what’s finally getting you to skip the post-mortem, but not so much that I’m going to call in for a Psych consult. I guess if you can just hold on any invocations of other dimensions till tomorrow…”

“You…you are so lucky that I’m a mature and reasonable adult now, and I don’t want to risk my Restricted Archives pass just to make the point that you shouldn’t question a good thing,” Stiles says. Still sputtering a little.

“Well, seeing as I’m the guy who issues those passes, glad to hear it,” his dad says, utterly unrepentant.

Stiles is tempted to stay for the full post-incident recap and drive his father crazy. _Sorely_. But…no, he is mature and reasonable, and right now the reasonable thing is to deal with some other priorities that he has, namely, his boyfriends and their chronic insecurity. So his dad’s completely undeserved mockery is going to have to wait.

“What happened now?” Derek asks as soon as Stiles walks up to him. “Did the guy find some more mushroom men or something?”

“What? No, why would you say that?” Stiles says, stopping and frowning at him.

Derek, who’s sitting on a Miskatonic-labeled chest of gear and smelling of decontam spray and looking very grumpy about it, briefly seems to consider just shutting up. His eyes flick over to the booth where Peter’s presumably still hosing himself down, and then he slumps a little, looking back up at Stiles. “Something come up with Athelstan?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Stiles says, frowning and looking over at where the other man is. From here it looks like Athelstan’s in pretty serious-looking discussion with his two werewolves, but they don’t seem like they’re going to break out the cosmic rifts so no alarms there. “Did you and them get into another—”

“What? No. They need to come get their kanima bits back, but Laura said she’d just call the cabin in the morning, me and Peter don’t need to,” Derek says. He still seems a little twitchy.

Then again, Stiles did come in sort of like a missile of irritation, even though that wasn’t directed at Derek. He tries to calm down and make himself look and smell less like that. “Laura said she’d do that?”

“She ended up missing this all since she and Chris were watching over the main Nemeton,” Derek says, shrugging. “She is probably going to be annoying about it, but Peter said he’d deal with it.”

“He did?” Stiles says.

Derek grimaces. “I don’t think…they’re gonna fight. Nobody really wants to fight.”

“Oh, okay,” Stiles says. He rubs at the side of his face, looking at Derek, and the way the guy’s watching him back…Derek gives more away if you think about what he’s trying to position himself to defend against, or if he even seems like he’s trying to defend himself. But sometimes, like now, he just sort of sits there like the best he can do is wait and see how bad he is later. Which is…not cool and really not easy to read, but also, Stiles isn’t going to do anything for that by being annoyed. Not anything good, anyway. “Okay. Okay, look, Dad’s gonna take it from here, and Athelstan’s going back to his cabin, so once Peter’s out of there, we can go back to Dad’s. You two don’t need to talk to anyone else, do you?”

“No,” Derek says, but he sounds surprised.

Then he looks over his shoulder, and Stiles assumes he’s looking to Peter for a cue…except that Peter is still in the decontam shower. He can’t be looking at Scott, and Scott’s the only other werewolf around now that Athelstan’s getting into a car. And while Derek has a very healthy respect for Stiles’ father, this also doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing where Derek would be worried about him.

Thinking about his dad does bring another thought to Stiles’ mind. One that Stiles almost dismisses as crazy, except…he looks at Derek again, remembering how his boyfriends had been acting right before Athelstan had joined them for dinner, right after he’d told them they didn’t have to do it if they hated it. And they’d totally ducked responding to that one, now that he thinks about it. 

“Inner Dad is so high up on the scoreboard at this point,” he mutters, sitting down next to Derek.

The other man looks over, confused and frowning, and then jerks as if he might object to the sudden close contact. Sometimes he does get concerned about boundaries, and Stiles generally tries to respect that (look, he likes the pack cuddles, but the point is for them to be relaxing and it is one hundred percent _not_ if you’re lying next to a large, muscled, twitchy werewolf, no matter how good your relationship is), but…that’s not the vibe coming off him. It’s more like he thinks he needs to get up and do something, because…he needs to do something.

“I just want to go home and call today a wash,” Stiles says.

Derek grimaces. And doesn’t get up, though he’s by no means settling. “Look, if it…helps or anything, I can talk to Laura and get her to—say something.”

“To the Lothbroks?” Stiles says, as his gut sinks. He used to really love it when he nailed a werewolf nuance, but these days—well, okay, he still recognizes that this is usually a better thing than not, but he…

He cares about why he’s nailing it, he thinks. It’s not just some abstract knowledge confirmation thing, it’s actual people he actually wants to be happy.

“Yeah,” Derek mutters. “If they’re that mad.”

“I don’t think they’re mad,” Stiles says. He catches himself fidgeting with his phone, which he took out at some point without realizing, and makes himself put it away. He needs to get through this without sidetracking into some obscure Cthulhic reference. “I think they and Athelstan have a couple things to work out, but I kind of think that might be ok—anyway, it’s not my business. I just—I just meant I’m honestly kind of done for the night, and I just want to wrap up.”

“Okay,” Derek says after a moment, the same way he responds to Peter when Peter’s got that blissfully homicidal glint in his eye, the no-banter one. “Well, when your dad’s done—”

“No, I mean, like right now,” Stiles says. “Dad can keep going, he’s the actual head of Security. I’m not and look, I know this is a little out of character for me, but I really, honestly, just want to lean on being another random student and go home.”

And then he yawns. He doesn’t even plan it, he’ll swear that under any Carcosan oath, it just…sneaks up on him.

Because he’s yawning, he has to close his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, the field command center is still there, and his dad is still in the middle of it, running things. Scott’s mom is no longer around but a quick look finds her a few yards away, talking with Scott as Allison listens in from a perch on a nearby car hood. And Derek, importantly, is still where Stiles left him.

“Okay,” Derek says. Still sounding like he doesn’t really know what to do with this, but at least it doesn’t come with that hint of helpless agreement. 

Stiles yawns a second time, not as big, and then rubs his hand over his face. “So when did Peter get in there?”

“I think it’s another couple minutes. They said he registered higher than me on the spore count,” Derek says.

He’s doing odd little movements with his shoulders, like he’s thinking about raising his arms but can’t quite get there. Then he sort of sighs, like he’s aggravated, but he’s the one whose arm has suddenly appeared around Stiles’ waist.

“You’re leaning funny and that guy’s not even around anymore,” is his idea of an explanation. “Just—”

His shoulder is a useful prop, Stiles has to admit. “Not gonna drool on the leather, don’t worry.”

“Don’t crease it either,” Derek mutters. He tugs at Stiles’ jacket, flapping it forward, without looking at it or at Stiles. “When you do your clamping thing.”

“I don’t _clamp_ , I secure attachment points,” Stiles mutters back, making himself comfortable against the other man.

Derek lets out another one of those sighs but he’s honestly not even trying to keep up the persona anymore. His fingers relax against Stiles’ side, just loosely fisted in the jacket, and last Stiles knows, he’s just watching Stiles’ dad’s team run around the parking lot.

* * *

So look, it is completely true that when Stiles is out, Azathoth could consume their dimension and he wouldn’t even notice the reshuffling of his various selves along the space-time continuum. But it is _also_ true that when an issue needs to be thoroughly checked out, Stiles doesn’t let something like bodily needs get in the way. So he naps through Peter emerging from the decontam shower and the drive back to his father’s rental house (and probably a lot of choice Peter-and-Derek bickering, but sometimes you have to sacrifice for the greater good), and through whatever the other two do to prep for settling in for the night. And _then_ he jumps Peter.

“Yes?” Peter says, brows lifting, like a naked man hasn’t just face-planted into his…also naked pectorals.

“I hate it when you just spring these on me,” Stiles says, once he’s dragged his eyes out of those well-defined and well-loved muscles.

Peter, smirking as only a man who knows what Stiles _really_ hates (and no, not the chest definition, that is very much not on the list, just occasionally the jerk it’s attached to), just lounges there, shoulders back, pecs…Stiles drags his head up a _second_ time, and now Peter starts to look a little worried. “Stiles,” he starts. “If this is about—”

“Are you seriously falling asleep over there?” Stiles says, looking at Derek.

Who’s also stripped and piled into bed with them, but unlike Peter he’s not going on the offensive with his nakedness. Actually, Stiles has caught him inching towards the pillows like he was planning to burrow in (after much careful study, Stiles has determined that Derek’s thing for lumping up in the bedding has nothing to do with wolf instincts for digging and is just, honestly, _Derek_ ) and for a second he hunches like the best thing to do is to accelerate that. 

But then, face screwed up in a defensive scowl, he pulls his head out and around to look at Stiles. “I thought you said you were tired,” he says, though his defeated tone acknowledges this isn’t going to work. “Fine, look, so we were—”

Stiles leans over and kisses him. 

That catches Derek off-guard enough that when Stiles snakes one hand down and rubs it along his abs, Derek sucks his breath so Stiles can slip in some tongue. Which, give the man credit, isn’t by itself enough for him to just roll over and go with it, but he does sag significantly closer to Peter. Which lets Stiles scoot up to straddle Peter’s chest instead of waist, and fist up some blanket to pull Derek close enough to really tease that belly. Derek huffs a groan, muscles ever-so-slightly bunching under Stiles’ fingertips.

“Stiles,” Peter says again, warm, appreciative, and yet distinctly resigned. “You are _patently_ trying to change the subject.”

When Stiles pulls off Derek, the man’s eyes are closed. They slit open just a second later, and under those criminally long lashes, the usual suspicion is there, but it’s got to fight through the obvious desire Derek has to just go with it. “Yeah, we can tell you’re still—”

“Annoyed? Well, yeah,” Stiles says, and then shuffles down a few inches so he can bend over Peter’s head. He plants his elbows on either side of the man, watching as Peter hides that expectation of bad things under a smooth smile, even though the body under his thighs is way too still. “Peter, the day was saved by _fungi_. You know it, I know it, and you _also_ know that anybody with even a little exposure to Cthulhu doesn’t like owing favors to fungi, even ones that aren’t sentient enough to invoke the Kingsport Edict.”

“I know.” Peter’s smile turns brittle. It’s not quite his reset face, but it’s close. There’s a small puff of air at Stiles’ back where he almost puts his hand and then changes his mind. “And Stiles, I’m—”

“Sorry, yeah, I know,” Stiles says, before laying one on him.

Unlike with Derek, Stiles doesn’t have to trick his way into Peter’s mouth. Peter’s there and waiting, and also, once he’s gotten something to work with, willing to put in a lot of effort. A lot. Which is more of a problem, honestly; Stiles has to drag out some old psychic meditation routines to avoid just letting Peter suck his plans right down that very…skilled…

Stiles breaks off, gasping, and then makes himself pull Peter’s hands off his ass. Then, before Peter’s raised brow can detour into something wary and brittle again, he moves back a few more inches. He also reaches out and tugs at Derek’s shoulder.

When Derek doesn’t want to go somewhere, he doesn’t want to go. So if he ends up with his face just a hair away from Peter’s, it’s because he wants to be there. “Want to watch?” he says, mostly to Stiles.

“Yep,” Stiles says.

He still kind of looks like he’s not doing this just for the sex, but…Stiles has seen Derek’s scowl when he’s genuinely being arm-twisted into something, and this is not that scowl. This is also not that growl, when Peter (apparently deciding, unlike Stiles’ father, to just go with the wonderful lack of being held accountable) languidly twists over and just catches at the underside of Derek’s jaw with his teeth, leaving faint pink dents in the stubble there. 

Derek shifts onto his back, making room as Peter rolls further onto him and brings up a hand to push away the sheets. Peter runs that hand back to loosely circle Derek’s rising cock, teasing at its head as he stretches over the other man. The slow flex of his back down to where his buttocks are undraping themselves from the sheets—Stiles blinks hard, then makes it over to the nearest bag with lube in it.

Amazingly, it’s the right bag, and the zipper doesn’t get stuck, and he doesn’t drop the lube on his way back to the bed (which, look, they are _hot_ , watching them would make people with twice Stiles’ motor coordination skills fumble things). He uncaps the lube and gets himself a good double-fingerful, then slides it into the hand Peter puts back for it like that’s just the natural thing to do when Derek’s licking up between your pecs.

Peter’s idea of thanking Stiles involves hiking his hips up, knees spread provocatively, and then making muffled amused noises when Stiles _does_ stumble in the middle of his crawl over and almost drops the lube dollop on the sheets and has to do an awkward grab at Peter to save it and himself. Because Peter’s a mindgaming asshole who doesn’t mind going for the cheap shot if it kneecaps somebody.

Well, whatever, Stiles picked that up within about five minutes of meeting the guy, and he’s intentionally cohabitating with him, plus Derek who is making very enthusiastic sounds about whatever Peter’s doing to him, and—anyway. Stiles has better things to do. Like fucking his slippery werewolf boyfriend. Which he does.

“Mmmm,” Peter says, when they’re a big, sloppy, sweaty pile together, Stiles still in him, with arms and legs tucked around the sandwich he and a surprisingly non-complaining Derek are making. “As much as it kills me to admit it, Melissa _is_ right about that brand.”

“Of course she is, but let’s not think too hard about why my best friend’s mom knows her lube,” Stiles mutters. He worms his knee around Peter’s leg a little, making sure it’s firmly braced against some part of Derek, and then digs his face out of Peter’s shoulder. “I mean, look, totally happy for her, she deserves all the fun time she gets, but also, my Dad, so I don’t wanna think—and so at what point did the posturing stop being about proving a point to the Lothbroks and start being about doing that to me?”

Peter goes still.

“Yeah, look, I was kind of slow about it but starting with dinner, it wasn’t about showing off how big and bad you are, it was about how you were going to psych them out with being _so_ polite to the visitors and just patronize them into being the ones to act out,” Stiles says. He shifts his chin up on Peter, deliberately moving so the man can feel it on his nape. “I said you didn’t have to do anything you didn’t like, but you did it anyway and you made out like you were enjoying it, but Peter, I know what you look like when you’re being joyfully psychotic and that was not it. That was—that was Bizarro Peter, in a world where you act psychotic because…you think I want you to? And yeah, I _completely_ just sexed you up so we could have this conversation where you’re not gonna move or get out of it because we fucked and I am temporarily immune to your physical charms because, well, sex we just had. Own that.”

So the one thing about this position is that Stiles can’t see Peter’s face, except for part of a cheekbone and mouth and the very corner of Peter’s left eye. Said parts are just about enough to tell Stiles that Peter is thinking very hard, but not enough for him to tell if it’s plotting an escape or actual engagement with the conversation.

“You know that just turns him on when you out-maneuver him,” Derek grunts, because now is when Derek chooses to deliver psychological insights. 

“Okay, yeah, but—we literally just screwed, your recovery time’s not that fast, I’ve tracked it and I’m still in the window,” Stiles says before he thinks.

Derek rolls his eyes. “Whatever chart you made, you probably left off how mental he gets about that kind of thing. It’s not just his cock he thinks with.”

“Nephew,” Peter says in a warning tone, moving a little, but he’s a good twenty percent under his normal irritation threshold. He’s still working out of being blindsided.

“Anyway, yeah, he got weird, but you’re the one who went and said you loved him right before—” Derek says anyway. Then he stops, pressing his lips together and looking at Peter.

He said that while knowing Peter was going to react…however Peter is reacting. Stiles can’t see it but Derek clearly thinks it’s a negative reaction, or will be. And Derek’s got some odd ways of reasoning his way through the world, but when it comes to his family, he doesn’t really just say random things. He always does it for a reason. Which reminds Stiles that Peter isn’t the only one emotionally contorting their way through a relationship.

“I was thinking about your window, too,” Stiles says, after thinking it through this time. He twists the arm he’s got around Peter so that he’s also able to curl his fingers over Derek’s bicep. “You get a _little_ more willing to talk about feelings after you’ve had sex. Also after you’ve had a minimum amount of junk food, but Dad’s had a rough day so I wasn’t gonna sacrifice his stashes.”

Derek’s brows push together. “I’ll take the sex.”

He’s so deadpan about it that Stiles has an irrational urge to hit him, which—honestly was probably what Derek was going for, with his tendency towards taking physical harm to avoid emotional. Hales and their weird, twisted ways of having non-homicidal feelings.

Speaking of. “Excuse him, he always tends to react badly to self-discovery,” Peter mutters.

Stiles sighs. “Look, Peter, when I said that, I wasn’t—you know, joking. I mean, I kind of was being sarcastic, but not about that part.”

Peter goes still again. Over his shoulder, Stiles can see Derek’s eyes widen slightly in alarm. Derek’s shoulders roll like he’s going to lever out from under them, and then he stops. His eyes flick up to Stiles, then back to Peter’s face, and judging from how puzzled he looks, Stiles figures this must be the most epic loading-bar face Peter’s ever made.

“I know what denning means these days. Sure, we joke about it, and you go along with it, under all the death threats, but…look, honestly, did you really think I’d just—I’d just sit back and let you put out all that effort if I didn’t reciprocate?” Stiles says. He really, really wants to look at Peter’s face, but at the same time, he’s got this probably-irrational fear that if he lifts even a finger off the other man, Peter’s going to disappear into a mantrap-building frenzy, or a quest to prove he’s got better side-eye than Lagertha, or something equally insane. At least, Stiles is telling himself it’s irrational. “Also, for the record, it’s because you’re you, and you’re you all the time, not because of how well you can be…something else. It’s not like this is something you have to earn from me.”

“I know that,” Peter finally says.

His voice is very even. The volume is normal, and he’s not inflecting weirdly, and Derek isn’t twitching so there can’t be anything happening in the supernatural hearing range. For all intents and purposes, he sounds like this is just any other casual conversation, and so that’s why Stiles convulsively grips at him.

And convulsively does something else, from the way Peter lets out a startled hiss and shudders from hips-out. Stiles makes an embarrassed noise, feeling his face flame up, and that’s when Peter abruptly relaxes into a laugh.

“I know that,” he says again, a couple seconds later. He pauses and his head moves so that he’s leaning it against Stiles’ cheek. “I know. I know who you are, Stiles.”

“You’re just not used to it,” Stiles mutters. Then grimaces when Peter goes still a third time. “Okay, look—I am not going to go into pre-me Beacon Hills history, because I don’t think this is the time, but—I have a lot of thoughts about that, just so you know. And also, I’m _denning with you_. Okay?”

He sounds pissed off. Well, he is, but not at them and he shouldn’t sound like he is. He’s about to explain that when Peter snorts, softer this time, and fully turns his head around to catch Stiles’ attention. The man still seems more subdued than usual, but it’s him in there, down to the amused, devious glint in his eye. “All right,” he says. “I suppose I’m hardly in a position to object.”

“You’re flexing,” Stiles points out, doing his best to keep from gasping.

Peter’s brow lifts. “Well, Stiles, you _were_ the one who decided to base a strategy on this position.” 

And then he full-on rolls out that lazy smirk of his, flexing around Stiles _again_ , till Stiles sways near enough to him for a kiss. Because what post-emotional reboot Peter feels like, apparently, is marathon sex.

Okay, so Stiles is a long way from actively objecting to that. But he’s also, kind of, trying to be a mature and supportive partner here (and can see a diversion tactic he _literally_ just used), and once they’re flopped over again, he just manages to hold off his physical crash to mumble, “I know it wasn’t really like that when we met so I want to make sure you know.”

This time he’s smushing his face into Peter’s chest, because he does not have enough willpower left to not succumb to the pecs, but he’s still intelligible. He can tell because Peter’s breathing goes off-cycle for a few beats.

“I know, Stiles,” Peter says quietly. His hand touches very lightly against Stiles’ side, as if he’s just checking which reality he’s is, and then Stiles feels his breath against the side of Stiles’ neck. “I don’t expect anything less from you. It’s…not about what I, or we, expect from you.”

“I feel like that’s still dodging things, but look, not gonna force you into an emotional…emotional…I can’t remember my geometry that doesn’t invoke bad things right now,” Stiles mutters. He really, really wants to go to sleep. “Anyway. You’re on notice for later, okay? I’m onto you. I’m so onto you I’m in love with you, you sneaky, annoyingly muscled werewolf. So you’re gonna have to get used to it.”

Peter laughs, and then brushes his lips against Stiles’ cheek as he slips out from under Stiles. Okay, so there’s still that pause before the laugh, but when he responds, he actually is doing it to what Stiles just said, and not to some external factor that’s conveniently demanding reprioritization (well, at least at the beginning). “I do want that, Stiles. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be trying to get used to it. Here, keep him out of this side, would you? It’s stickiest over here.”

“What, why—goddamn it, Peter, if you’re getting a towel—”

Derek shuts up, palpably seething under Stiles, as Peter’s footsteps head off towards the bathroom, accompanied by soft whistling. Then Derek lets out a grudging sigh.

“Just try not to cut off any circulation,” Derek says under his breath.

“’m not asleep yet,” Stiles mumbles. “Also, hey—”

“You don’t love me,” Derek says. He’s not accusing or wounded or angry about it, just very matter-of-fact. “It’s fine. And it’s not—I get it’s not a pity thing, I’m not _that_ messed-up, so don’t wake back up and start a whole conversation about it.”

“Ugh, your preemptive—something I can’t even,” Stiles says, his last couple conscious brain cells just clinging to the English language. “Fine, okay, but also, you self-defensive asshole, you’re my other boyfriend and I’m kind of hoping to get there without you being—being like this. So, I mean, I hope you’re happy about it. Eventually. At least you could stop trying to get Peter to murder you to avoid it.”

For a little bit Derek is quiet. Stiles is too close to sleeping to really know if it’s because the man’s trying to outwait Stiles or is too irritated to answer or something else, but he’s still awake enough to dimly wonder.

And maybe Derek senses that, because he finally pushes his hand under one of Stiles’ thighs and hikes Stiles up his body, and then rolls them a little so that he can do something with a pillow. “Just go to sleep. If you squeeze something off, I’m a werewolf, I’ll heal.”

“Not how it works,” Stiles slurs.

“Yeah, whatever,” Derek says. He breathes on the top of Stiles’ head. “I actually like you, and I don’t really want Peter to kill me, so go to sleep, Stiles.”

Not perfect, and not good enough, but…Stiles is human, and tired, and these days, he’s learning to be a little patient with people outside of ritual magic. So it’s somewhere to leave things. “’f now,” is the last thing Stiles’ brain manages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carter is, of course, Randolph Carter, who survived an encounter with the cosmic horror deity at the center of the universe with sanity intact but who sort of left his consciousness all over the space-time continuum in Lovecraft's _Through the Gates of the Silver Key_ , basically because he used the Cliff's Notes version of his spellbook.
> 
> Slow but steady progress. This Derek and Peter have insecurities in the sense that they recognize what they have and they don't want to self-sabotage, and they're also actively trying to not self-sabotage, but they've spent a lot of time interacting with people suffering from the same trauma as themselves. Stiles has issues coming out of past experiences too, but of a totally different type. So, not to get tragedy-porn about it, but this is partly about their respective traumatic influences learning to talk to each other.
> 
> Also partly about John getting belated parental revenge at Stiles having to realize that all those things his dad went on about in an effort to keep Stiles Stiles and not let him turn into another insular, haughty, bigoted Miskatonic lifer? Have really stuck with him. John would be so proud if he wasn't groaning over paperwork right now.


	15. Chapter 15

In the morning, Stiles discovers that the Miskatonic Security team ended up inventing two completely new containment protocols while cleaning out the Leng wash-out’s tent.

“You’re on the email distribution list, it’s not like we didn’t document it,” his dad points out, eyes only a little bloodshot, as he and Melissa happily sit down to a small skyscraper of Chris-made pancakes.

“They’re organic buckwheat,” Chris says to Stiles’ incredulous stare. Then he turns around to face the table. “Is that normal? He’s not blinking.”

Peter shoulders past Chris with just a passing dirty look and a “I’m sure that makes the fat in all the butter on top that much less likely to stick in an artery” before handing Stiles a mug of coffee.

Also, the sheriff is taking a short vacation out of town and until he comes back they’ve all been instructed to contact Parrish for any coordination with the police, and Scott’s forwarded an effusive note from the ghoul commune about how they’d love kanima parts for their blood beets. In fact, they’ve already dispatched a courier for pick-up and are offering to waive the expedited shipping charge if they can just get a guarantee that they don’t have to wait for proper death certification to start processing, because freshness matters.

“Laura’s bitching about her freezer space already,” Derek tells Peter over his own giant pancake stack. “If their university’s anything like Miskatonic, can’t they just make up a cover story for whoever in Norway? I don’t think we want to listen to her go on about it the entire time we’re here.”

“This _is_ my kid being normal, just have some of your own damn food, you were up as long as we were,” Stiles’ dad is saying to Chris.

And Athelstan’s already emailed Stiles a sketch for a joint paper on the mushroom people, since he’s unfortunately still waking up on European time and he thought he might as well get his thoughts down while they’re fresh. Also, he has some thoughts on the Nemeton and how it might be approached, once they’re sure it’s not still upset about the first meeting, or the fungi hunter trying to mutate its acorns, or half-a-dozen other things Athelstan just wants him to know that Athelstan knows about and would completely understand could cause a delay.

Okay, so dinner and a couple chats clearly doesn’t fix everything. But as the coffee kicks in and Stiles’ rational mind slowly shakes itself out, he…thumbs his phone to the lock screen and puts it away, and goes to have breakfast with the others. There are a bunch of emails he hasn’t even gotten to, some with very interesting subject lines, but he’s got priorities. And right now, they’re with the people in the room with him.

* * *

Brichester’s Head of Security absently tucks her hair over her ear, gently pushing its pale cilia out of sight. _“John, I realize it’s been less than twenty-four hours, but you must understand why we’d be concerned about one of our visiting scholars, particularly when it’s Athelstan,”_ she says, leaning towards her camera. _“You have gone through his file, haven’t you?”_

“Are you kidding me, Judith?” John says. Then he thinks about it and raises his hand. Then he thinks a second time and takes it down. “Look, yeah, I’ve been up all night dealing with a code orange but I also can’t believe you’re gonna come at me like this when you know I’ve got to call the Leng people next.”

Judith’s brows rise. _“Well, you’re clearly worn out, so I’m trying to make this—”_

“And—” John raises his hand again, phone up so she can see the screen “—and your own dean just sent me a request to expedite the sex magic part of the post-mortem write-up. Just that part. Because this meets the ‘critical and urgent experimentation’ standard for something over on your side of the water.”

_“He…”_ Judith says, before looking down at something off-screen.

Probably her phone. “It’s on official letterhead,” John says, doing his best imitation of Stiles’ fake-helpful voice. “Right form and everything.”

Judith closes her eyes and rubs at the side of her nose, and thinks a little. Then she looks back up. _“Let’s do this—I’ll stall that and you keep the Leng people away from it—”_

“Well, yeah, that goes without saying—”

_“—and we’ll both kick this to the medical teams,”_ Judith sighs, now tapping at a keyboard. _“I’ll just have them send Athelstan the forms and when he schedules with them, it’ll kick you back a notification. All right?_

“Works for me, see you at the deans’ meeting,” John says. Then he ends the videocall and closes the window. The one right behind it is for his inbox, full of new emails, and for a moment he seriously considers retiring.

Just for a moment. No way in hell he’s trusting anyone else to keep things in line, not before Stiles gets tenure (and honestly, with their dean, sometimes John revises that to getting a departmental head position). John sighs, cracks a couple knuckles, and gets to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiles has come a long way, from Cthulhic-obsessed, prickly new graduate who thinks he has to constantly defend his expertise, to waiting till after breakfast to pounce on his father for new eldritch details. So heart-warming. So many tentacles to get him there, but still.
> 
> Judith is a rare _Viking_ female character who navigates her way to power through largely nonviolent ways. Also, she lost an ear at one point because of Dark Age double standards on adultery. Here, she's got both ears but one is...Cthulhic, shall we say.


End file.
